Network-centric warfare

Headnote

An Emerging Military Response to the Information Age

Network-centric warfare (NCW) is about human and organisational behaviour. It focuses on attaining access - access to gather, process, and manage information to take advantage of the growing power resident in information networks. It offers a method to build information superiority, a key factor to success in the future battlespace. It facilitates the creation and sustaining of shared awareness at all command levels. Network-centric warfare supports speed of command - the conversion of a superior information position to action. When geographically dispersed forces enjoy information superiority, they can self-synchronise or self-organise to accomplish time-urgent tasks.

In brief, NCW is not narrowly about technology, but broadly about an emerging military response to the information age.

Network-centric warfare is a concept. As a concept, it cannot have a definition, because concepts and definitions are enemies. Concepts are abstract and general, while definitions are concrete and specific. Thus, if a concept can be defined, it is no longer a concept. This is why only "working definitions" of NCW can be provided thus far. It's not overreacting to suggest that those who lament most strongly that NCW has no definition are not counted among its friends.

Network-centric warfare is a concept about means. To operate in a network-centric environment is not an objective or a goal of combat. Likewise, to operate network-centricly is not a strategy for conducting combat. Rather, network-centric warfare is a tool, a means to empower strategies to accomplish objectives, or ends. Whatever the question, NCW is neither the answer nor the plan to obtain the answer.

Network-centric warfare is a relatively new concept, and it needs maturing. Research, field experimentation, war gaming, exercises and ultimately combat experience will all help to crystallise the concept. Establishing the technical structure the concept requires to shift military operations to a higher plane of execution has started, and organisational changes to accommodate the needed new directions are underway. Also, the process of developing doctrine to fully incorporate the concept into the warfighter's toolkit has begun. There's no cookbook here with a recipe for success. Instead, NCW points to a course to steer to assist the military in transitioning to the information age.

Twenty-first Century Conflict

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