Among members of the Carl Vinson (CVN-70) Battle Group during Operation Enduring Freedom, information had to be transmitted with near-real-time speed. "The Web is the brief"—the mantra of Battle Group Commander Rear Admiral Thomas E. Zelibor, here on the Carl Vinson's flight deck in November 2001—helped drive the knowledge-Web culture through the ranks of the battle group and battle force, connecting people with information as never before.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said that transformation shows "a revolution in military affairs is about more than building new high-tech weapons. . . . It's also about new ways of thinking, and new ways of fighting."1 In Washington, D.C., transformation of the military preoccupies senior officers, media outlets, congressional military experts, and think-tank analysts. But what about the men and women in the fleet? Is transformation a part of their daily lives?
Almost two years ago, on my third deployment, well before transformation became a part of my vocabulary as a member of the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, I witnessed the power of innovative thinking from the decks of the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) and the USS Princeton (CG-59). At that time—it was 10 September 2001—our battle group was steaming off the coast of Pakistan and was poised to enter the Arabian Gulf in relief of the Enterprise (CVN-65) Battle Group. After the terrorist attacks the next day, Vice Admiral Charles W. Moore, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, and Commander, Fifth Fleet, ordered the formation of a multicarrier battle force under the command of Rear Admiral Thomas E. Zelibor.
With this sudden new formation at sea, there was an obvious, immediate need to meld the subtle operating differences between these two battle groups. How could Admiral Zelibor do more than just coordinate the myriad assets in his command? How could he keep every sailor from the bilge to the bridge on the same page at the same time when the page was changing constantly? Traditional message traffic was too slow and its hierarchy too rigid. Compounding the problem, the joined battle groups used slightly different approaches to their individual operating procedures. No less, each battle group came from a separate coast with its own characteristics developed during its workup schedule. Was everybody in the newly formed force seeing the same link picture? They were, because of a coincidence of innovation called knowledge Web (KWeb).
Before its deployment, the Carl Vinson Battle Group, like most others, used the secret Internet protocol router network (SIPRNet) to create a battle group Web site. The site was relatively static; it displayed schedules, archived documents, and held other administrative information. It was not a tool readily used by watch standers. The battle group staff recognized that the SIPRNet was not being used to its maximum effect. Admiral Zelibor called on his officers to innovate and thereby transform. It happened during a war game in Newport, Rhode Island.
The Global 2000 War Game originally set out to test something the Navy called the "knowledge wall," a big-picture tactical command system that offered multiple large displays (walls of knowledge) for tactical decision makers. The battle group staff and the contractors quickly realized that, most often, information was organized by where it came from, not by how the information would be used during battle group operations. Thus, the knowledge wall itself had no real knowledge. The power of the system was in harnessing information from multiple sources, fusing it into a consistent, user-friendly format, and instantaneously disseminating that information back to the war fighters and decision makers. In other words, it was the difference between books in library stacks and opened books and other knowledge spread out on a "large oak library table, easily accessible and constantly changing," according to Dr. Jeffrey Morrison, a Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SpaWar) representative who helped design the KWeb application for the Navy. Upon realizing the shortcomings of the knowledge wall, Admiral Zelibor challenged the Office of Naval Research and SpaWar to develop a system he could use for the upcoming deployment that would facilitate fleet users' ability to quickly input, update, and manipulate information for the knowledge wall. SpaWar responded. The result: KWeb.
The KWeb system is designed to present knowledge in a highly interconnected, holistic way that allows for an infinite number of paths of exploration between people, places, things, and events. Each such person, place, thing, and event is a node. Attached to each node is in-depth information, a "vital statistics" summary, and links to external resources such as multimedia or other Web sites. From each node, the user—a watch stander, a commanding officer, the battle force commander—can travel to other nodes that are connected contextually to the original node through some relationship. The possible pathways are infinite. The number used by a user depends only on the situational requirements of the person or event in progress.
The new Web-page-creation software incorporated in KWeb called SumMaker now gave warfare commanders a powerful interface to coordinate knowledge and information across multiple platforms in near-real time without forcing war fighters to become Web mechanics. As Admiral Zelibor said, "I do not expect my fighters to be Web page designers." Indeed, KWeb gave the battle force a single format with which to fuse data about meteorology, ammunition status, intelligence photos, battle damage assessment, and more. Fewer than 18 months after Global 2000, KWeb was being used across the whole battle force in the Arabian Sea.
The power of KWeb pervaded every level and warfare community in the battle group. For example, the admiral's flag watch had a wall of configurable screens that could display multiple KWeb pages in addition to the global command-and-control system picture. At any time, the watch standers would have the intelligence, air defense, surface warfare, and Judge Advocate General rules-of-engagement pages on display, with anything from operational tasks to pictures of suspect merchants just clicks away. Meanwhile, the aircraft carrier's tactical action officer in the combat direction center could be using KWeb to print out the nightly intentions and confirm his morning underway replenishment time and location. In the ready rooms, squadron duty officers could be printing cards of the day or graphical depictions of defense counterair stations for pilots' kneeboards. A destroyer's captain would be checking the logistics page to review the status of casualty-report parts the battle group's materiel officer was expediting. KWeb provided a single continuously flowing fountain of reliable and current information from multiple sources, accessible to anyone with SIPRNet access—even an inbound battle group 6,000 miles away preparing for turnover. KWeb increased the speed of command by capturing value-added information already being created by several command staffs throughout the battle force and displaying it on a single Web site.
For daily battle group operations, message traffic became an outmoded and ineffective form of communication, used only as a backup to the more accommodating and agile KWeb. Because KWeb served as the chief source for information, it became less likely that watch standers or staff members could use incorrect versions of documents, miss important communications, or experience watch-stander error that could produce miscommunications within the battle group. While battle group chat also helped resolve conflicting information and improved operations, KWeb provided a single site for the battle group to archive current and applicable message traffic while complementing those messages with up-to-date summaries, graphs, charts, and other useful information.
KWeb is not a technology. It is a concept that uses the Web as a collaborative decision-management tool within the force. It provides straightforward Web editing tools that allow senior and junior personnel alike to create Web sites to store and present knowledge in an easily accessible and dynamic environment. It was not the KWeb tools that transformed our warfighting efforts. The transformation came from Admiral Zelibor's leadership, resulting in wholesale acceptance of a new and more effective way to collect, manage, display, and use information. After obtaining a version of KWeb suitable for deployment, Admiral Zelibor created a warfighting culture in the battle group that centered on KWeb. For example, he required his warfare commanders and the assistant chiefs of staff to brief him daily from the same KWeb sites the battle group's watch standers were using.
It was not until I came to the Pentagon to work for the Secretary of the Navy's special assistant that I began to understand transformation and the importance of removing barriers that limit creativity. I learned that the power of transformation does not lie within the E-ring of the Pentagon; it rests with the ability to empower sailors and Marines to recognize and creatively approach problems to quickly convert them to solutions.
The Carl Vinson Battle Group did not deploy with a version of KWeb envisioned by scientists, engineers, or high-level bureaucrats. It was a vision developed by the war fighters closest to the problem. They had the drive to create a process that became one of the most important decision-management tools in the first war of the 21st century. As military leaders, we need to continue to challenge our people, our systems, and our processes to overcome new problems and develop new solutions. That mind-set is true transformation, whether that term is used or not, and will lead to more technical changes and improvements as we prepare for 21st-century warfare.
Lieutenant Majeranowski is assigned as the executive assistant to Douglas Combs, the Secretary of the Navy's Special Assistant for Business and Strategic Initiatives. During Operation Enduring Freedom, Lieutenant Majeranowski was stationed on board the USS Princeton (CG-59), where he frequently rotated to the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) to serve as air defense commander liaison.
1. Donald Rumsfeld, address at the National Defense University at Fort McNair, Washington, DC, 31 January 2002. back to article