The Chinese and Russian militaries, identified as the top priorities in the 2018 National Defense Strategy, determined some time ago that the character of war has changed.1 They believe military competition has shifted decidedly to the information domain. The operational-level challenge they present is not their use of social media to influence strategic narratives; rather, it is their assertion that in modern war, military forces must vie for battlespace information superiority.
If there has been such a fundamental shift in military competition, and if the nation must have the “dominant naval force . . . ready for decisive combat operations” called for in A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority 2.0, then Design 2.0 does not address the necessary priorities. To remedy this, the Navy information warfare community (IWC)—comprising the intelligence, cryptologic warfare, cyber, communications, and oceanography disciplines—must act urgently to shore up Design 2.0 with information-centric operational concepts.
China’s Information Warfare Realization
On 7 May 1999, the NATO alliance was 45 days into its air campaign to end Serbian atrocities in Kosovo. That night, 10,000 pounds of U.S. ordnance slammed into the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. A B-2 stealth bomber had achieved direct hits on the embassy, mistakenly identified by intelligence analysts as a Yugoslav supply headquarters that was actually 300 meters away.2
For the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the airstrike was a seminal event. Shortly after the bombing, China’s highest military decision-making body, the Central Military Commission (CMC), convened an emergency meeting.3 Certain the United States had committed a brazen act of aggression, it responded by launching the 995 high-technology development program. The number 995 reflects the year and month the program was established, May 1999. The 995 program accelerated the development of high-technology armaments.
China’s high-tech investments were about much more than creating an asymmetry in the correlation of forces. The 995 program provided the PLA with capabilities to realize asymmetric operational concepts based on information dominance. Following the overwhelming U.S. military success in the 1991 Gulf War, Chinese military scholars divined that information warfare (IW) was a critical combat capability. In 1996, Department of Defense (DoD) guidance in Joint Vision 2010 included an imperative for the U.S. military to gain and maintain battlespace information superiority.4 Chinese IW theory built on this and other U.S. IW proclamations, including visions for dominant battlespace awareness and net-centric warfare espoused by top U.S. military thinkers, such as Admiral Bill Owens and Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski.5
Recognizing the wisdom in these information-warfare visions, the Chinese believed that the character of war—what they call the “form of war”—had changed profoundly. By 2004, the PLA was directed to fight and win “informationized” wars.6 “Informationization” is analogous to mechanization. Just as machines had transformed industrial-age warfare, information was transforming information-age warfare.
In the late 1990s, though, Chinese military capabilities that might enable information-centric concepts were lagging. In 1998, a noted China military analyst offered the following assessment of the PLA’s IW efforts:
To sum up, the available evidence suggests that the PLA does not currently have a coherent IW doctrine, certainly nothing compared to U.S. doctrinal writings on the subject. While PLA IW capabilities are growing, they do not match even the primitive sophistication of their underlying strategies, which call for stealth weapons, joint operations, battlefield transparency, long-range precision strike, and real-time intelligence . . . [T]he Chinese military cannot reasonably expect anything approaching information dominance for the foreseeable future.7
Then came the 995 program. Major General Yao Youzhi, former director of the influential PLA Academy of Military Sciences, acknowledged in a 2012 speech that the 995 program and the ensuing acceleration of Chinese military development had been a direct response to the 1999 embassy bombing. “We should be grateful to the Americans,” he said.8
For 20 years, the 995 program has driven the development of capabilities to actualize Chinese information-centric operational concepts.9 Unfortunately, U.S. naval intelligence and the broader intelligence community have focused their analytical energy on the PLA military hardware that has emerged, not on China’s underlying information-warfare operational concepts.
Great Power Information Competition
China’s informationized warfare strategy and Russia’s “new generation warfare” (NGW) concept are complex and layered, but in both approaches information dominance is the main emphasis. They seek to compensate for shortfalls in technology and force structure relative to the U.S. military by creating asymmetries in the information space, leveling the playing field by denying information to superior U.S. capabilities while ensuring their own information flow.
China’s informationized warfare strategy relies heavily on long-range precision strike as a supporting element. While the potency of PLA weapons is considerable, a focus on maneuver and firepower should not obscure an understanding of how the PLA will employ its weapons. The Chinese strategy seeks to seize battlespace initiative by first degrading and destroying adversary command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) to establish information superiority. Long-range fires contribute by destroying information nodes and driving adversary reconnaissance, including space-based sensors, away from the battlespace. The adversary joint force is then disaggregated into elements that are unable to sense and communicate and become more vulnerable to PLA fires.
Russia’s NGW strategy features many of China’s informationized warfare strategy tenets. The Russian “information confrontation” concept is an organizing principle for NGW, prioritizing and choreographing all military and nonmilitary campaign efforts.10 Battlespace effects are achieved through denial and deception (maskirovka), electromagnetic spectrum operations, and computer network attacks to shape perception and decision-making at all levels of warfare. Russian military and nonmilitary elements, employed in a holistic, coordinated manner, create information strikes that confuse adversary situational awareness, allowing Russian forces greater freedom of action.11
Failure to comprehend the centrality of information control to Chinese and Russian military operations is a profound example of mirror imaging. The United States, institutionally wedded to kinetic firepower and maneuver, has demanded that U.S. intelligence focus analysis on those same adversary capabilities. Certainly, there were U.S. military leaders who understood U.S. competitors’ information-centric operational concepts early on, but most continued to focus on procuring hulls and airframes and their passion for “salvo sizes” and “exchange ratios,” relegating discussions of battlespace information control to secondary status.
Only recently have more U.S. military leaders begun to acknowledge that they cannot continue to embrace industrial-age mechanized warfare concepts. General Joseph Dunford, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described contemporary changes to the character of war shortly after the release of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. “Advancements in space, information systems, cyberspace, electronic warfare, and missile technology have accelerated the speed and complexity of war,” he wrote. “As a result, decision space has collapsed.”12 While it may no longer be surprising that information is rapidly changing the character of war, the Chairman’s observations are a tacit admission that Chinese and Russian information-centric strategies and concepts are working. The U.S. military is finally grasping that these strategies—strategies that its competitors have been developing for decades—have shifted military competition into the information domain.
A Design for Information Warfare
A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority 2.0 is mostly silent on the changing character of war and information superiority as an operational imperative. A graphic featured in the document depicts information warfare undergirding military power throughout the competition-to-conflict spectrum, but beyond that, Design 2.0’s lines of effort make no mention of information warfare. The main focus is on recapitalizing the fleet with submarines, ships, and aircraft. There are references to supporting networks, grids, and data, but how those capabilities contribute to combat information superiority is not made clear.
Design 2.0 is in fact a regression from Design 1.0, a document half as long that discussed the role of operational information twice as much. Design 1.0 mandated the advancement of information warfare capabilities and envisioned power projection in highly informationalized and contested environments. The Navy IWC should recommend the following changes to Design 2.0’s lines of effort:
- Line of Effort Blue: Strengthen Naval Power at and from the Sea. Invest significantly more in IW capabilities. The IWC must advocate for significant increases in C4ISR, especially capabilities organic to Navy platforms, to face the onslaught of adversary counter-C4ISR capabilities. Investments in exquisite networks to distribute information among combat forces are not enough.13 Even if the Navy doubled its investments in capabilities such as resilient ISR, redundant communications, denial and deception capabilities, electronic warfare, and IWC personnel, that would be insufficient to counter Chinese threats to information superiority. Design 2.0 is incongruent with the National Defense Strategy’s calls for increased investments in C4ISR and other capabilities that will gain information superiority over adversaries.14
- Line of Effort Gold: Strengthen Our Navy Team for the Future. Develop deep, penetrating knowledge of the adversary. The IWC’s naval intelligence component must return to what World War II legend Captain Joseph Rochefort said was an intelligence officer’s “one job, one task, one mission”—to tell the commander what the adversary is going to do tomorrow.15 In an encouraging sign on that front, the convening order for the Navy officer promotion board in fiscal year 2020 featured some new language: “Intelligence officers are experts on the adversary and threats, and developing deep expertise on our Nation’s strategic competitors is an imperative.”16 That is objectively true, but the order did not prioritize threat expertise above discriminators such as career diversity and leadership. Naval intelligence has become so consumed with a myopic focus on pathways to command that it has lost sight of its “one job.” To better inform Navy training, capability development, and operational plans, naval intelligence must invest in expertise that builds on traditional operational intelligence (OpIntel) skills and combines it with deep knowledge of adversary military doctrine, organizational culture, language, history, and technological trajectories.17
- Line of Effort Green: Achieve High-Velocity Outcomes. Improve red team play in planning and exercises. Design 2.0 directs efforts to use red teams to expose the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in plans as early as possible. For several years now, there have been clarion calls, many in the pages of Proceedings, for more and better adversary red team opposition forces in exercises and war games.18 Red teams staffed and trained by IWC personnel with deep, penetrating knowledge of the adversary are necessary to drive fleet innovation and capability development against adversary information superiority concepts. In a realistic scenario, U.S. commanders will be frustrated by red deception and will find themselves engaged in a dynamic fight for information superiority before the shooting starts. To ensure U.S. forces will be as well prepared as possible, red operations enabled by C4ISR and electronic warfare capabilities should challenge, confound, and ultimately undo U.S. plans in an effort to improve them.
- Line of Effort Green: Achieve High-Velocity Outcomes. Advance information-centric operational concepts. The IWC should lead Design 2.0’s mandate to strengthen warfighting concept development, not simply support it. The U.S. military still has no coherent doctrine for information warfare at the operational level of war. The five pillars of information warfare—operational security, electronic warfare, psychological operations, military deception, and physical destruction—have devolved into independent doctrines that often do not get enough sunlight to grow in the oppressive shadow of cyber. Joint Concept for Operations in the Information Environment addresses control of the strategic narrative in conflict but offers no solutions for operational-level IW application.19 The Navy IWC is in a unique position to lead in developing operational concepts that combine intelligence with other IW and kinetic warfare capabilities to achieve battlespace information superiority.
- Line of Effort Purple: Expand and Strengthen Our Network of Partners. Send IWC officers forward. High-end maritime conflict against challengers pursuing information-centric operational concepts means that information and intelligence links between the United States and allied forces will become a lucrative target. Developing and hardening communications and intelligence partnerships must be an IWC imperative. Regrettably, the IWC no longer has dedicated allocations for naval attaché positions; discrete community billet allocations were dissolved in 2015. While foreign area officers are doing great things for Navy engagement, the IWC has ceded far too many opportunities in the attaché corps.
“Information won’t kill me!” is a refrain often heard from operators when IW officers advocate for information-centric concepts and for placing IWC personnel in traditional warfighting leadership roles. In reality, information may not be the “what” that kills you, but it is the “how.” The Chinese embassy bombing 20 years ago spurred the rapid development of military capabilities that have allowed the PLA to realize its information-- centric operational concepts. The Navy and IWC should adapt and respond to these challenges in their efforts to maintain maritime superiority.
The volume and velocity of information in the modern battlespace, now enabled by artificial intelligence, has arguably changed the character of war. Information warfare and long-range strike will combine to generate inbound high-velocity effects that may lead to undesirable high-velocity outcomes. The information warfare community must embrace the changing character of war and guide the Navy on a course that will allow it to prevail against challengers to U.S. maritime information superiority.
1. The character of war should not be confused with the nature of war. According to Clausewitz, the nature of war is enduring, “an act of force to compel our adversary to do our will.” The character of war, how belligerents engage in conflict, changes over time due to variables such as technological developments, culture, law, and politics.
2. See Thomas Pickering, “Oral Presentation to the Chinese Government regarding the Accidental Bombing of the P.R.C. Embassy in Belgrade,” (official memorandum, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, 17 June 1999).
3. Zhang Wannian Writing Team, Biography of Zhang Wannian, (Beijing: Liberation Army Press, 2011), 416, as cited in Tai Ming Cheung et al. “Planning for Innovation: Understanding China’s Plans for Technological, Energy, Industrial, and Defense Development,” report prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, University of California, Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, July 2016, 26.
4. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Vision 2010 (U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1996), 16.
5. ADM William Owens, USN, “The Emerging System of Systems,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 121, no. 5 (May 1995): 35–39; VADM Arthur Cebrowski, USN, and John Garstka, “Network-Centric Warfare—Its Origin and Future,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 124, no. 1 (January 1998): 28–35.
6. China Ministry of National Defense, China’s National Defense in 2004, white paper (Beijing: PRC State Council Information Office, December 2004).
7. James C. Mulvenon, “The PLA and Information Warfare,” in The People’s Liberation Army in the Information Age, ed. James C. Mulvenon and Richard H. Yang (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1999), 185.
8. Cheung, et al. “Planning for Innovation,” 27.
9. Li Daguang, “Perspectives on PLA Equipment Development on the 90th Anniversary of the Founding of the Army,” China Defense Industry Conversion, July 2017, 8.
10. Sergei Chekinov and Sergei Bogdanov, “The Nature and Content of New-Generation War,” Voennaya Mysl [Military Thought], October–December 2013, 18.
11. Dmitry Adamsky, Cross-Domain Coercion: The Current Russian Art of Strategy (Institut Francais des Relations Internationales [IFRI] Security Studies Center, November 2015), 30.
12. GEN Joseph Dunford, USMC, “The Character of War and Strategic Landscape Have Changed,” Joint Force Quarterly 89, 2nd Quarter (2018): 2.
13. Design 2.0 discusses developing a “comprehensive operational architecture” to support distributed maritime operations (DMO). While this appears to be an initiative to create a communications and data network, it falls well short of integrating broader IW capabilities into DMO.
14. James Mattis, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2018), 6.
15. Rochefort’s full quote regarding the attack on Pearl Harbor was, “I can offer a lot of excuses, but we failed in our job. An intelligence officer has one job, one task, one mission—to tell his commander, his superior, today what the Japanese are going to do tomorrow.” John Schindler, Leadership Embodied: The Secrets to Success of the Most Effective Navy and Marine Corps Leaders, ed. Joseph. Thomas (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2013), 76.
16. For example, Gregory Slavonic, “Order Convening the FY-20 Promotion Selection Boards . . . Lieutenant Commander” (official memorandum, Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 16 May 2019), 17.
17. For example, CAPT (ret) Bill Bray, “Naval Intelligence: Build Regional Experts,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 143, no. 12 (December 2017).
18. For example, CAPT Dale Rielage, USN, “War Gaming Must Get Red Right,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 143, no. 1 (January 2017); ADM Scott Swift, USN, “Fleet Problems Offer Opportunities,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 144, no. 3 (March 2018); CAPT Henry Kim, USN, “Surface Warfare Needs Aggressor Squadrons,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 145, no. 5 (May 2019).
19. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Concept for Operating in the Information Environment (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 25 July 2018).