Network-centric warfare promises to fulfill for the military the old motto of the founding fathers: E pluribus unum—Out of many, one. Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen will be connected to the highest echelons of command, and the smallest tactical decision will be made at the touch of a button thousands of miles from combat. But will the real strength of the U.S. military—people—get lost in the effort to build the ultimate technological force?
Having been occasionally dominant since the 18th century, the principles of rational conflict have again emerged from their dusty laboratory in the guise of network-centric warfare (NCW). The advocates of NCW may consider themselves the creators of a unique vision of armed conflict, but they are only the latest proponents of the old concept that war is a scientific endeavor. This modern version of rational conflict concludes that a networked combination of pervasive sensors, a godlike vision of the battle space, and long-range precision weapons will enable U.S. military forces to be the most effective on earth.
This vision is compelling, yet it is hampered by a failure to recognize the true strengths of the U.S. military: the highly trained officers and enlisted personnel who populate the ranks, their ability to innovate, and the leadership skills encouraged throughout the force. The U.S. military always has been proud of the intrinsic strength of a force that contains leaders at every level, each of whom understands the commander's intent and, most important, is empowered to create innovative solutions to solve difficult tactical and operational problems. Paradoxically, it is Americans' love of technological innovation that threatens to subvert these very strengths. The threat lies not within the core concepts of NCW, which propose universal connectivity and information distribution, but with the possibility that NCW is morphing from a force-multiplier into a technological warfare management system.
If implemented incorrectly, NCW could damage our existing strengths in three important ways. First, the warfare management philosophy of NCW seems to advocate that war can be conducted in a scientific manner. This has been proved time and again to be an erroneous assumption, and falsely focuses on the tools of war rather than the human component and art of war. Second, the connectivity and information distribution facets of NCW might result in an increasingly frequent short circuit between the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of warfare. One of the goals of NCW is to flatten the existing commandand-control hierarchy to shorten command timelines, but this threatens to foreshorten unnecessarily the broader focus required of our leaders at the strategic and operational levels of war. Third, the early products of NCW are encouraging a dangerous trend toward centralized control and execution. If this continues, we will create an organization that has a diminished ability to develop the leadership skills of its junior officer and enlisted personnel and discourages any independent action and stifles innovation.
Art, Not Science
In the battle to explain why the technological vision of NCW can be hazardous if delivered or received incorrectly, one must go no further than the conflicting interpretations of the nature of war itself. Many military writers and philosophers have recognized the concept that war is related to art, but few have explored the basis for this linkage. Many proponents of NCW believe the rational act of military planning, combined with the ability to measure precisely the effects of modern weapons and a superior command-and-control system, will provide the scientific basis on which future war is conducted.
Unfortunately, this network-centric understanding of warfare generally neglects the most important element of the profession: human beings. Because war is a human endeavor, it contains the basic level of uncertainty inherent in any human pursuit. Clausewitz defined the uncertainty in war as two components, "friction" and "fog."1 Friction is the statistical certainty that tools and weapons are going to break at precisely the wrong time, and fog is related to the inability to forecast human behavior reliably. This fundamental uncertainty is one of the most important characteristics that defy the rational calculus of scientific warfare.
The two most important human elements that defy scientific analysis and are central to making any war chaotic are creativity and emotion. It is in this context that war is most closely related to art. No matter how overwhelming the forces arrayed or how small the potential for victory, warriors on both sides of a conflict will attempt to use creative solutions to get a positive outcome—regardless of what the rational calculus of relative military strength might suggest. Indeed, this theoretical niche is the home of asymmetric warfare, the weapon of the relatively weak against the relatively strong. The type and intensity of the emotional involvement on the part of every combatant nation also is a key, but immeasurable, component. Any emotion from the vast palate of human passions can be used to influence the planning and execution of a military campaign. Art does not have a rational duality, and cannot be planned and executed in the absence of emotion—and neither can war.
The Short Circuit
At the strategic and operational levels of war, the NCW paradigm provides a tempting vision for political leaders and combatant commanders. This new suite of technological capabilities is promising to enable theaterwide leadership from a geographically displaced, well-connected command center managed by a large staff. This center not only will provide a definitive display of the conflict but also will allow instantaneous communication with, and control of, every echelon of U.S. forces. This ideal, however, is nothing new. The 19th-century vision of German Field Marshal Alfred Von Schlieffen is strikingly familiar:
No Napoleon, surrounded by a glittering suite, will make an appearance on a height overlooking the battlefield. . . . The warlord will be located farther in the rear, in a house with spacious offices, where wire and wireless, telephone, and signaling equipment are available. Hordes of lorries and motor vehicles, fitted out for the longest journeys, there await their marching orders. There, seated on a comfortable chair, in front of a large desk, the Modern Alexander will have the entire battlefield under his eyes on a map. From there he telephones inspiring words, receives reports of army and corps commanders, captive balloons, and dirigibles, which all along the front watch [the] enemy's movements and register his positions.2
The dream that proponents of NCW and Field Marshal Von Schlieffen share is the creation of a comprehensive command-and-control network that pushes the control of any military force up to the highest echelon possible. Today, with this vision potentially within reach, the warfare-management capability of the NCW concept is being felt most strongly at the highest levels of command.
At the strategic level, the NCW-enabled battlefield promises to alleviate the growing concern of the nation's political leaders, in that it mitigates the possibility an "unsupervised" officer at the tactical level will take an action that might have unpredictable strategic or operational results. This zero-defect premise is guaranteed to stifle the independence of the chain of command below the strategic and operational levels. If the future of U.S. military action lies in the frequent conduct of military operations with limited political goals, we need to maintain the system that allows a pervasive distribution of commander's intent all the way down the chain of command.
At the operational level, NCW suggests a degree of situational awareness and power that will allow a commander to act with the same speed and effectiveness that was available to him when he was commanding a tactical unit. Rather than maintaining a prudent separation from any individual battle to maintain a true operational-level perspective, the officers who exercise that level of command and who have never forgotten the thrill of their personal experience as tactical leaders are wooed by the NCW promise of both the big-picture vision and pseudotactical connectivity. In practical terms, NCW describes a technological method of military micromanagement—not an operational-level leadership tool.
At the organizational level, the proponents of NCW have discerned a new methodology in the attacks of our information-enabled adversaries. In their eyes, the future of warfare lies in a series of self-synchronized attacks by groups not hierarchical in organization, but more closely resembling a network. "The lesson: Institutions can be defeated by networks. It may take networks to counter networks," say theorists John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt. "The future may belong to whoever masters the network form."3 This observation is persuasive, but potentially overlooks basic human sociology. It is predictable that a "flat" networked operation will be forced to nurture leaders, and inevitably will develop a classic leadership hierarchy. Networks provide an excellent modelfor some systems, but most human organizations eventually develop a hierarchical system out of sociological necessity.
Operational Leadership vs. Centralized Control
Over time, incorrect implementation of NCW may damage the set of leadership skills that is critical for U.S. forces to be effective. At the operational level, the ability to exercise a more centralized style of control combined with the apparent necessity to dictate tactical execution will tend to mitigate the necessity for an operational leader to create a clear and concise commander's intent. Rather than promulgate the mission, objective, and commander's intent and distribute these items down the chain of command, a NCW-enabled operational leader might believe these new powers of near-real-time communication will allow him to create these critical guidelines on the fly.
A centralized NCW command-and-control structure also might have a corrosive effect on the long-term growth and development of our military leaders. Leaders are "born to be made," and as of today there is no society that has determined how to nurture consistently the leadership skills of any single individual. Instead, most modern militaries use a general approach to leadership development. In the United States, junior officers initially are taught a specific set of professional skills and encouraged to develop their leadership abilities as byproducts of the daily challenges and decision-making opportunities they face. As these personnel progress through their careers, their superiors periodically select them for advancement. Nominally, the successful officers are selected not only for their technical prowess, but also for their demonstrated leadership skills. To date, this methodology has worked reasonably well.
This proven leadership development methodology creates an incentive to demonstrate leadership skills throughout a career, make decisions, innovate, and take risks. The development of an NCW-based centralized control and execution network, however, gradually will eliminate the need for junior or midgrade officers to develop these skills. When this trend is taken to its logical conclusion, it forecasts a world where decisions will be made exclusively by senior leaders. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the 1979, it counted on the overwhelming numbers, technological superiority, and centralized control and execution of its forces. As a result, the material strength of the Soviet Army was irrelevant because it had limited ability to react, adapt, or lead effectively at the unit level. On the other hand, the recent U.S. campaign in Afghanistan demonstrated that a small force composed of innovative leaders can prevail in this hostile environment if every member understands the larger objective, is empowered to make decisions, and is encouraged to adapt and innovate.
Part of the reason NCW theory avoids much discussion of leadership is because it is difficult to link a soft subject to the technological revolution. According to basic NCW theory, "Leadership becomes a subset of the cognitive domain. This is the domain of intangibles: leadership, morale, unit cohesion, level of training and experience, situational awareness and public opinion."4 Symptoms of the deemphasis of junior-level leadership and decision making can be found not only in the nonofficial feedback from ongoing military operations, but in NCW literature as well. Retired Navy Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski recently was quoted as saying, "The decision loop is—OK, I see what you are looking at. Now I have to decide whether or not I want to let you commit.'"5 Unfortunately, the "I" in this case is slowly becoming the operational-level commander and the "you" is a unit-level leader whose training and decision-making skills are becoming irrelevant. This short-circuiting of an effective military leadership system will disfranchise our midgrade leaders and gradually drain the independence of junior leaders by minimizing the opportunity to make leadership decisions at lower echelons. If this trend continues, the U.S. military eventually will find itself with a generation of senior leaders who have a significantly diminished capability for operational command.
The Way Ahead
The chief lessons learned from more than 200 years of proud U.S. military service are more descriptive of an open architecture where decentralized control and execution are the rule, risk taking is celebrated, and innovation is encouraged. To achieve the true promise of the NCW revolution there are two steps that must be taken.
The first step should be to conduct a frank review of the strengths and weaknesses of the military. It is easy to quantify the relative technological strength of the U.S. military against the rest of the world, but this supremacy is only temporary. Indeed, this technological imbalance is pushing our global competitors to the research and development of asymmetric employment strategies that we may be able to counter only with an innovative, independent military force. This review must be conducted with a historical perspective. It is only then that we will discover in detail what we already know in general, that our military is superior because of its personnel and culture of leadership.
Once we have identified the strengths of our force we must focus the incorporation of information technology on the parts of the force that require the most assistance. Most important, the implementation of this technology should be human-centric. The employment of Walmart-like asset management strategies should provide a template for certain areas of the Department of Defense where applicable, such as supply and administration. Improvements to the command-and-control architecture should emphasize decentralized execution at every stage. Finally, the temptation to push centralized control up the chain should be resisted ruthlessly. The effort to flatten the command-and-control hierarchy must be examined not only through the eyes of the NCW information technology experts, but also through the eyes of sociologists, so that we do not end up destroying an already effective human organization only to model our own machines.
1 Paraphrased from Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by M. Howard and P. Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 119.
2 Alfred Von Schlieffen, quoted in Martin van Creveld, Command in War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 153.
3 John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, "Cyberwar Is Coming!"in In Athena's Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age, ed. John Arquilla and David Ronfeld (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1997), p. 40.
4 Department of Defense Report to Congress, "Network Centric Warfare" (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2001), pp. 3-9.
5 VAdm. Arthur Cebrowski, USN (Ret.), quoted in "Transformation Trends," Office of Force Transformation, 2002, p. 3.
Commander Springett is an EA-6B pilot who has done tours in a number of fleet EA-6B squadrons, the OpNav staff, and most recently completed a year at the Naval War College, where he graduated with highest distinction.