NETWORK CENTRIC WARFARE: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

Abstract

Network Centric Warfare (NCW) is a keystone of the constant revolution in military affairs, that continues apace within the defense establishment. Expanding the idea of what is traditionally understood as NCW, focusing more heavily on "network" vs. "warfare", this article seeks to expand the consideration of NCW concepts. Treating NCW as encompassing not merely insight into intelligence/battlefield management, but overall combat support and service, the piece attempts to stimulate thought on NCW. NCW facilitates information sharing/collaboration, enhancing information quality and expanding shared situational awareness across all levels of war. It enables collaboration and selfsynchronization, while enhancing sustainability and speed of command. Technological innovations and their uses come with both advantages and disadvantages. Implementation of new concepts in warfare can create new weaknesses or vulnerabilities an enemy can seek to exploit. NCW is not immune; thus, a few of its inherent and/or derivative advantages and disadvantages are offered, with a brief consideration of each.

Headnote

Network Centric Warfare (NCW) is a keystone of the constant revolution in military affairs that continues apace within the defense establishment. Expanding the idea of what is traditionally understood as NCW, focusing more heavily on "network" vs. "warfare", this paper seeks to expand the consideration of NCW concepts. Treating NCW as encompassing not merely insight into intelligence/battlefield management, but overall combat support and service, the piece attempts to stimulate thought on NCW. A balanced examination tempers the indisputable advantages created by NCW's enhanced information, speed, and control with cautionary warnings on vulnerabilities, threats, support tail expansion, and most critically, the longterm risk of leadership atrophy and technology overdependence.

NCW facilitates information sharing/ collaboration, enhancing information quality and expanding shared situational awareness across all levels of war. It enables collaboration and selfsynchronization, while enhancing sustainability and speed of command.

Technological innovations and their uses come with both advantages and disadvantages. Implementation of new concepts in warfare can create new weaknesses or vulnerabilities an enemy can seek to exploit. NCW is not immune; thus, a few of its inherent and/or derivative advantages and disadvantages are offered, with a brief consideration of each.

Keywords: Network Centric Warfare, situational awareness, common operational picture, decisionmaking, battle space, information operations environment.

Introduction

For a number of years, a lot of ink and many millions of dollars have been consumed in pursuit of a real-time, integrated, simultaneous picture of a fused infosphere and battle space. This idea is known within the United States Department of Defense (DoD) as Network-centric Warfare (NCW), and has been an on-going transformation initiative. The goal of which is to provide a shared awareness and a common operating picture for the integrated force (US, allied, coalition, and other government agencies) on the battlefield or in a battlespace, conducting full-spectrum operations in the 21st Century. NCW focuses on technology solutions, and how solutions affect individual and collective behavior. It is the nearly simultaneous harnessing of emerging tactics, techniques, and procedures interconnected in such a way as to create a decisive war-fighting advantage in the operational environment.

Involving all areas of the Joint Capabilities Integration Development System, NCW allows technology to mass power through "information, access, and speed."1 The stated aim is to integrate information and systems in such a way to enable decentralized decision-making across the spectrum of decision points - from the tactical level of the individual soldier throughout the command and control structure to the strategic level.

The assumption: combat power is enhanced by sharing awareness.

NCW is based on adopting new ways of thinking in the military2 and harnesses the power of information to expedite the decision cycle and gain a significant advantage in the operational environment.3

Thus, NCW is a mechanism for gathering information from all available sources, and providing combatant commanders with a single, integrated sight picture for ease of review, decision, and dissemination. The network allows, or, more accurately, provides the capability, for this information to also be available across commands, services, and allies.

As with most things, technological innovations and their uses come with both advantages and disadvantages. Often, what some people see as advantage, others might perceive as disadvantage. Additionally, implementation of new concepts in warfare can create new weaknesses or vulnerabilities an enemy can seek to exploit. NCW is not immune to discussions regarding its value.

1. The Advantages of the Network Centric Warfare

Perhaps the single most significant advantage of NCW is an opportunity to gain improved situational awareness at every level of the command structure. When effectively implemented, this improvement gives commanders a true, real-time common operating picture and allows forces to selfsynchronize 4 and collaborate horizontally.5 It also provides commanders at all levels the ability to target the enemy with the most effective and lethal mix of weapons.

If viewed from the perspective of Boyd's OODA Loop6, NCW enables seamless iterative flows through the observe, orient, decide, and act cycle. Networks and new technology have allowed for unprecedented amounts of data collection, the processing of this data into meaningful information instantly relevant to commanders, and decision support systems that enhance the ability to analyze and share more completely and faster than ever before.

Computing speed and integrated networks, processing thousands of relevant inputs, can flatten the fusion and control mechanism, delivering push and pull information capability and cueing technology to the war-fighter and associated equipment. Fielding increasingly sophisticated technology and advanced platforms can provide the ability to increase effectiveness.

Combat power is derived/multiplied through the efficient gathering, sharing, and, most critically, the exploiting of information. Network-centric operations seek to maximize all resources to ensure not only rapid data acquisition, but increasingly fast data mining and information processing to provide situationally relevant products to commanders at all levels of war. Knowledge is power. More people can now collaborate on an issue, strategize, and problem solve. The result of all this is better final informational output, in order to keep not only the combatant commander informed, but key actors at all levels of mission execution.

Through improved situational awareness, the speed of execution is increased, as decision-making data based on a broad and deep information stream is available even to the "smallest tactical unit."7 In fact, tactical units - as well as tangentially interested parties - can follow the development of the decision-making calculus in real time. This supply of information might serve to simply inform, allow added time to prepare, or serve to allow unique input from parties not solicited for input, but nonetheless in possession of facts critical to the decision process and ultimate execution/outcome. Thus, producing enhanced war fighting insight via integrated tactical "ground-truth" with strategical considerations, with simultaneous analyses from people at all levels.

In addition to increasing the lethality of combat forces, improved situational awareness can reduce both incidences of fratricide and collateral damage to noncombatants. Moreover, NCW can increase a commander's span of control, providing economy of force (small and more agile units) across the battle space, while effectively orchestrating all elements at his or her disposal.8 This advantage becomes a significant force multiplier, and allows the commander to continually track and shape the battle space.

Stepping away from the purely operational advantages that NCW can provide, support and combat functions can better align supply and demand based on a truly common operational picture. Taken to the logical extreme (within the limitations on combat support reach), it could effectively turn combat logistics systems into a realtime, data-fed, just-in-time, materiel delivery system in the model of the most efficient modern manufacturing systems. The F-35 Lightning II is working to implement just this type of support system under the guise of an "autonomic logistics information system" whereby the jet itself has a rudimentary intelligence designed to monitor key systems' performance, and effectively notify aircraftsupport systems when a part is failing or reaching end-of-life. This sort of NCW system data-feed could be as simple as providing a report with a redflag based on low supply levels, all the way to a system that could use predictive models to autonomously direct suppliers to prepare for future orders based on usage patterns and future projected operations.

NCW provides an efficient means of integrating single service, joint, allied, and coalition forces into a single homogeneous information operations environment. The near real time information fed from strategic intelligence assets to the tactical level, and from the tactical to the strategic decision-maker, allows for rapid actions on the objective. This shared common picture leverages intellectual capital across a geographically dispersed force. NCW allows the expansion of human capital economies of scale beyond previous boundaries that triggered diseconomies.

2. The Disadvantages of the Network Centric Warfare

A primary disadvantage of NCW is that it is highly resource intensive. Procuring necessary hardware and software is not only expensive, but is an ongoing cost with no ceiling, as both hardware and software systems reach obsolescence at ever increasing speed. Maintaining said wares, as technology evolves, will be even more costly. The overdependence by DoD on commercial information technology providers with conflicting goals (maximizing shareholder value vs. providing national security) has the potential of compromising national security by constructing a system on a platform over which you have no direct control. While this risk can be mitigated somewhat by organic development on open-source platforms, there is a very limited existing capacity to do this at the present time, not to mention, no known inclination to do so.

Further costs arise with the steps necessary to ensure interoperable platforms. One need only look at the current inability of U.S. forces to communicate among themselves or with allied/coalition forces. Aside from the difficulty of service-specific stove-piped data systems, existing treaties and agreements, and limitations on data sharing among any given collection of varying coalition partners in one or another operation can create special problems. In the ever shifting modern security environment, the protection of sources and methods and effectiveness and operation of unique NCW capabilities will drive the need for systems that provide flexible information output to coalition partners transparently based on security limits; and this requirement drives an additional order of magnitude of complexity. Of special concern is the uncertainty surrounding the long-term viability and, as yet unrealized, full effectiveness of NCW.

Resource expenditures will not only be felt in terms of finances. Research and development can take years. That amounts to an uncertain opportunity cost equation as valuable time and attention is spent on NCW and not on other concerns, missions, or allied interoperability. Additionally, the risk of obsolescence during such processes is almost guaranteed as so many NCW-like systems are built on a foundation of Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment and software that advances based on commercial demand versus military need. The complexity inherent in developing systems with highly fused data requirements can take more than five years to reach the field; while computer hardware typically refreshes every 18 months and commercial operating systems on a 12-14 month cycle, driving either obsolescence or increased cost as the government has to pay suppliers for diminishing manufacturing sources or delayed software end-of-life agreements.

Beyond resource consumption, security is almost impossibly difficult. An integrated network-centric configuration is only as secure as the most vulnerable platforms, operating systems, interfaces, and users. As the Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden cases have recently made plain, insider attacks are a significant risk with highly networked systems full of sensitive data. A single individual with elevated access and an axe to grind can completely undermine the entire network, all the information it contains, and the security/capability it projects.

Physical security of NCW system nodes are an especially troubling vulnerability. Satellites are an obvious example, and have become increasingly COTS-like and less hardened than the military systems of the recent past or Cold War era. As a result, they are highly vulnerable to kinetic attack, electronic interference, or other means of rendering them ineffective. Natural forces, like sunspots, can also add uncertainly to operations. Additionally, defending network relays is difficult with the vulnerability of ground nodes, many of which are provided by commercial vendors outside of secure locations. Another major security concern is data integrity as meaningful information requires continuously maintaining information trust, structure, and credibility. Finally, pure information volume strains fusion and control mechanisms, and either human or machine issues could exacerbate a problem and lead to mission failure.

Moreover, it is altogether possible that potential adversaries with no acquisition loop may be able to rush ahead of and exploit our NCW capability, via other commercially available or simplistically asymmetric means.9 As recently evidenced when members claiming to be affiliated with the Syrian Electronic Army were able to seriously degrade the online presence of technology behemoths Twitter and the New York Times, the ability to disrupt network operations is a very real threat. These threats can range from state actors to cyber-terrorist groups like "Anonymous" down to individual "script kiddies" using widely available open source and commercial attack tools to cause mayhem on connected systems. Ultimately, it is important to recognize that possibilities exist for increasing the efficiency of existing systems and processes without the massive investment in large, complex, networked systems.

Considering the depth of required technology distribution, security/encryption issues, bandwidth requirements, and Moore's Law, etc., the more reliant the military becomes on NCW, the more susceptible it becomes to both technical factors in addition to the real threat of an information technology sophisticated enemy.

All these factors are exacerbated by the types of environments the United States and her allies typically engage in military operations. Bandwidth, power, access, and nodes are scarce in harsh, isolated environs. The sensitivity of modern hightechnology systems to heat, dust and moisture, as well as the large standing army of personnel to manage and support such systems in the field create a significant support tail.

From clean facilities to generators, from air conditioning units to spare parts, from physical security to technical support and management, NCW systems need key requirements that could limit their effectiveness on the battlefield. This potential drain could lead to adverse effects on both the deployment logistics footprint to other important pieces of defense budgets; does the DoD spend its time and space on bullets, butter or CPUs? Transformational adjustments to capitalize on NCW's potentialities may not be forthcoming or may be unrealizable in contested settings. Another looming, but less considered disadvantage is the required revisions to doctrine and force structure (organization) to take full advantage of NCW.10 Merely appending technology to existing hierarchical command and control constructs will not result in significant improvements.11 In fact, evidence exists that indicates NCW capabilities allow and encourage senior leaders meddling in actions well below their level. This micromanagement tendency thwarts the autonomy of tactical decision-makers, frustrates actions, and marginalizes authority down the chain of command.

Worse still, it could be argued that NCW might produce a long term negative impact on the military, as young leaders never get to really lead because superiors maintain control from the operations center or further back in rear echelons. While the intent is well-meaning - adhering to the grand strategy, not having subordinates make superiors look bad, hedging against mistakes - the result is crippling to the development of young leaders.

The nature of the small wars we have been engaged in while NCW capabilities have rapidly matured do not need the multiple, overlapping bureaucratic layers that are populated by superfluous leaders, all of whom have tactical visibility and communication ability. Daily video teleconferences undermine the necessity of some leadership autonomy. Further, very restrictive rules of engagement that require call backs to superiors in the rear before actions are taken in the battle space and on the battle field limit the growth and maturity of both junior officers and senior enlisted alike. [Admittedly, mistakes are unwanted; but it must be remembered and realized that leaders are forged, not trained via PowerPoint.] Many would contend that "meddling" by leaders has long-term effects that are already manifesting, as every level of leadership is looking over their shoulders because the next level is watching and directing in a very real way.

Modern militaries have technology overdependence, impacting both the strategical and operational arts. Technology can aid the conduct of war, which is inherently a human endeavor; the volume of information processing through the network can cause information overload for the humans engaging in war.

Advanced technologies are outpacing our allies to the point that forces cannot interoperate, producing a stifling of initiative resulting in failed missions. Collection and transmittal of information from diverse sources is primarily designed to speed targeting processes between the sensor and the shooter, rather than focusing on military objectives and tasks.

It fails to address the personnel, cultural, and leadership lessons we have learned over the past decade in Iraq, Afghanistan, and across the continent of Africa. This ultimately leads to the largest risk associated with NCW, the increased vulnerability it creates for U.S., allied, and coalition forces.

The previous paragraph noted that modern militaries - especially the Unites States military - often suffer from a technological overdependence. This overdependence was brought to the broad attention of the American public during the most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the fight against improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defense Organization brought forth over $21B in funding to combat cheap and widely-available explosive devices built on simple technology platforms such as cordless phones, infrared remote control sensors and basic pressure plates.12 This challenge to coalition forces and the subsequent response highlight that NCW will create a dangerous center of gravity for any military force that becomes too dependent upon it.

The idea of a center of gravity is generally credited to Clausewitz, who introduced it in the seminal classic On War, where he stated: "Out of the characteristics a certain center of gravity develops, the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends.

That is the point against which all our energies should be directed."13 When an entire military infrastructure, from doctrine, to training, to equipping a force is dependent upon the advantage that NCW provides, disrupting NCW can cause the entire house of cards to collapse. One of the most obvious examples the military has sought to prepare for is the disruption of the Global Positioning System (GPS) signal, upon which virtually all "smart weapons" depend for targeting guidance.

If you create an entire military command, control, communications and information system dependent upon NCW principles like everywhere access, trusted communication, and high-speed data, you give an enemy a detailed map of how to defeat you. As a result, systems have to be not only robust, but your doctrine and training has to be tolerant of working without NCW available, and that least-common-denominator or worstcase- scenario undermines all the effort and work spent on an NCW system. While cliché, the old saw "The enemy gets a vote" is all too true, and depending entirely and inflexibly upon a single concept of any sort is a sure step on the road to defeat.

Conclusions

The speed of decisions is meant to translate into speed of tactics and targeting. There are concerns that NCW will become a panacea, and the human factor of military operations will be diminished. An additional concern is the limitations of the human animal in dealing with extraordinarily large and complex data sets.

Without intelligent, highly fused data systems that can translate raw data into information usable at the appropriate command level of war, all the effort and resources spent on NCW is for naught. This human factor can lead down multiple branches, two of which will virtually guarantee mission failure. The most common branch considered in NCW discussion is data saturation, leading to paralysis.

The concept of data saturation concerns the widely varied and overwhelming amount of raw data points available using current systems alone. From data available in generally available commercial systems like Google Earth, to unclassified military systems to classified data ranging from sensitive to Top Secret, the platoon commander in the modern military has data that would have seemed truly fanciful to even a combatant commander as recently as the Gulf War in 1991.

This sheer volume of available data can be simply overwhelming, as a military leader works to reach a decision that is both militarily advantageous and defensible to civilian leadership and the media, and can result in paralysis.

This paralysis can take the form of data overload, to the point that the leader is unable to sort through the vast amount of data points available to him, or the inability to act because he is waiting for that one last bit of data to make that decision completely obvious and immune to second-guessing, after the fact.

As dangerous as this is, however, NCW data overload can lead to an even more perilous condition, that of oversimplification.

This oversimplification in the face of virtually unlimited data has resulted in the "PowerPointization" of modern warfare, wherein the most complex concepts are driven to the most basic level based on the tool available instead of the information requirement for presentation.

This can lead to a complete loss of the underlying message in the data as the staffworks to refine and simplify it for presentation at the colonel and general/flag officer level. However, as Brigadier General H.R. McMaster noted in a telephone interview with the New York Times in 2010, "Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable."14

Too little information is far more dangerous than too much, and therefore, NCW systems must be respectful of and responsive to the human element.

Ultimately, the human factor cannot be eliminated from war; overreliance on systems or a particular tool can produce uninformed, rather than informed, decisions - absent much "ground truth."

While NCW can, in theory, reduce the possibility of this, too many system design concepts force information into a standard format instead of letting the information define the appropriate means of presentation to be an effective decision support tool.

Avoiding the unintended manifestation of disadvantages and creating decisive war-fighting advantages is the challenge of NCW, as the capability continues to be extended into operational environments.

This focus on technological solutions must include allied and coalition information sources, subsequent sharing, and concurrent dissemination. Provision of a common battle space picture in real-time remains a worthy goal, the pursuit of which will consume scarce resources and spark continued debate.

Disclaimer

The views expressed herein are those of the authors alone and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US government, the Department of Defense, or the United States Air Force.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to specifically thank Colonel Marius Serbeszki, PhD. lecturer (Air Force) with "Carol I" National Defence University for his consistent encouragement and stalwart help in bringing the manuscript to print. The opportunity to expand our vitae to Europe wouldn't have been possible without his aid and support. Additionally, we'd like to also thank Mrs. Daniela Rapan, for the boundless patience with which she guided us through the process of publishing internationally, with guidelines and formats unfamiliar. What often seemed daunting to us, they made easy. Thanks!

Footnote

NOTES:

1 The Implementation of Network-Centric Warfare, Washington, DC, Office of Force Transformation, 2005, p. 14.

2 Jeffrey L. GROH, Network-Centric Warfare: Leveraging the Power of Information, J. Boone BARTHOLOMEES Jr., ed. US Army War College Guide to National Security Issues, Vol. 1: Theory of War and Strategy, 3rd edition, 2008, p. 324.

3 Ibidem, p. 323.

4 David S. ALBERTS; John J. GARSTKA; Richard E. HAYES; and David A. SIGNORI, Understanding Information Age Warfare, Washington, DC: Department of Defense Command and Control Research Program, 2001, p. 7.

5 Donald RUMSFELD, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2006, p. 59. See also GROH, op. cit., p. 327 and Thomas L. FRIEDMAN, The World is Flat, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005, p. 207.

6 The OODA Loop model was developed by Colonel John Boyd, USAF (Ret). The concept involves four actions: observe; orient; decide; and act. Originally, this looping concept referred to the ability possessed by fighter pilots that allowed them to succeed in combat. The concept is now used by varied organizations to assist with competitive business decisions. The premise of the model is that decision-making is the result of rational behavior in which problems are viewed as a cycle of observation, orientation (situational awareness), decisions, and action. Moving through the loop quicker than an opponent, or "getting inside" their decision cycle, is a means to advantage.

7 Donald RUMSFELD, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2006, p. 59. See also GROH, op. cit., p. 327 and Thomas L. FRIEDMAN, The World is Flat, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005, p. 207.

8 The Implementation of Network-Centric Warfare, Washington, DC, Office of Force Transformation, 2005, p. 14; and Clay WILSON, Network Centric Warfare: Background and Oversight Issues for Congress, June 2, 2004, p. 7.

9 Thomas X. HAMMES, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, Saint Paul, Minnesota: Zenith Press, 2006, p. 195.

10 True transformation requires a combination of technology, doctrine, and organization changes that come together or are fused to produce a new approach. Great leaders are typically those that see and seize the opportunity presented by technology to revise doctrine and alter organizational structure - think Napoleon.

11 HAMMES, op. cit., 195.

12 Peter CARY, Nancy YOUSEF, JEDDO: the Mahattem Project that bombed, The Center for Public Integrity, http://www.publicintegrity.org/2011/03/27/3799/jieddomanhattan- project-bombed

13 Carl VON CLAUSEWITZ, On War, trans. and eds. Michael HOWARD and Peter PARET (Indiana: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 595-96.

14 Elisabeth BUMILLER, "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint", The New York Times, April 26, 2010, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world /27powerpoint.html?_r=0

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. ALBERTS, David S.; GARSTKA, John J.; HAYES, Richard E. and SIGNORI, David A., Understanding Information Age Warfare, Washington, DC: Department of Defense Command and Control Research Program, 2001.

2. FRIEDMAN, Thomas L., The World is Flat, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005.

3. GROH, Jeffrey L., Network-Centric Warfare: Leveraging the Power of Information", in BARTHOLOMEES, J. Boone Jr., ed. US Army War College Guide to National Security Issues, Vol. 1: Theory of War and Strategy, 3rd edition, 2008.

4. HAMMES, Thomas X., The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, Saint Paul, Minnesota: Zenith Press, 2006.

5. RUMSFELD, Donald, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2006.

6. VON CLAUSEWITZ, Carl, On War, trans. and eds. HOWARD, Michael and PARET, Peter, Indiana: Princeton University Press, 1984.

7. WILSON, Clay, Network Centric Warfare: Background and Oversight Issues for Congress, June 2, 2004.

8.***, The Implementation of Network-Centric Warfare, Washington, DC, Office of Force Transformation, 2005.