Cybernetics - Deliberately unwinnable "wars" to perfect scientific dictatorship

[Anti_Illuminati]

"In fact, the ultimate objective of the network centric warfare described by VADM Cebrowski is not to wear down the enemy's physical ability to make war at all, but to instill a sense of "shock and awe" that will create a "self-fulfilling prophecy" of defeat."
-Dr. Edward A. Smith, Jr.

In reference to indicting Dick Cheney:

"Let me put it to you this way, if we do--If everyone works together, and comes real close to closing them down, you will see the mother of all terrorist attacks."
-Indira Singh

http://www.iwar.org.uk/rma/resources/ncw/smith.htm

Submission to the Naval War College Review
Dr. Edward A. Smith, Jr.
(703) 465-3319

Network Centric Warfare:
Where's the beef?

What is Network Centric Warfare? Where's the beef? Most attempts to answer these questions seem to emphasize the "network" and the new technologies used to create more effective sensor and communications architectures. These architectures, it is argued, will enable us to create and exploit a common situational awareness, to increase our speed of command, and to "get inside the enemy's OODA loop." 1  Yet, descriptions of the technologies and capabilities alone can leave us asking the same questions. What is it? Just what does it bring to warfare? Why is it so critical to America's future military power that we must give up other capabilities to buy it?

These persistent questions point to the need for a different emphasis, one that focuses first on the "warfare" side of the equation. That is, we need a working warfare concept of what we are trying to do with network centric operations before we can create the necessary information architectures. Such conceptual work can help us not only to recognize the potential in networking but can help us discern the limits and limitations of the changes we propose. It also can provide a fundamental understanding of the role of network centric operations both in battlefield and across the spectrum from peace through war, as well as in our national security and national military strategies. An evolving working concept is, in short, the first step in drawing a road map for building a network centric "Navy after next."

As we gradually build this working concept, we need to bear some common-sense caveats in mind. We are not likely to find in any network a single universal technological solution to all our warfare problems. Older forms of warfare are likely to persist alongside the new. Greatly accelerated speed of command will be a critical measure of our success, but numbers and endurance will still count. Enhanced common situational awareness will multiply our power, but knowing our enemy will be more critical than ever. Adversaries will respond and, the more successful our concept of warfare, the more asymmetrical their responses are likely to become. Our objective in network centric warfare is not to provide a single answer or to provide all the answers. It is to identify those combinations of new thinking and new things that offer better answers to our warfare needs on as many levels of war as possible and over as great a portion of the spectrum of conflict as possible. The measure of our success will not be the quality of the network or the quantity of firepower we build but rather, what effect the networking of combat resources enables us to have on the enemy. That suggests two things.

-First, our concept of network centric operations will be intimately tied to an understanding of effects-based warfare, that is, a results-oriented process centered on the relationship between our actions and specific desired enemy reactions.2  Network centric operations are the "enabler" for effects-based warfare. The shared situational awareness, speed of command, precision, "lock out," and other capabilities we seek to effect in network centric operations are the tools needed to implement effects-based warfare. Indeed, we can almost begin to think in terms of a single working concept of network centric effects-based warfare.

-Second, as this connection between network centric and effects-based warfare implies, our working concept must step beyond the problems of the tactical battlefield engagement. It must address how network centric operations can be used to produce decisive effects in theater/ campaign level operations and in the politico-military and strategic dimensions of war. Even more, it should address how such capabilities might help us translate our warfare prowess into a broad stabilizing deterrence running from peace through crisis and war.
The better our concepts and technologies, the more often and more widely network centric warfare will be applicable. And, the more often it works, the better will be our success in deterring future conflict.

For the United States, the success of both network centric warfare and effects-based warfare is likely to hinge on how they enhance our ability to project decisive military power over vast distances. Power projection is one of the pillars of our National Military Strategy and is the focus of the Navy's .From the Sea. The reason is simple. It is the capacity to project decisive military power across the world that makes the United States a global power and undergirds a national security strategy founded on engagement and shaping. This requirement is rooted in America's geography. Because the United States lies far from most of the regions in which it has vital interests, it must deploy its military power to the regions where it is needed if it is to be effective.3

Projecting decisive power is costly. Not only is it expensive to transport and sustain forces over vast distances or to maintain the capability to do so, but the distance tends to attenuate the quantity of conventional forces that can be deployed and sustained. To apply decisive military power at considerable distances from the American heartland, the United States has relied heavily on high technology to multiply the power of the forces it projects. These force-multiplying technologies are at the root of network centric warfare and effects-based warfare. Both concepts may be enabled by new technologies, but there is clearly much more to them. Their real power derives from the combination of new thinking and new technology applied to a new, more decisive style of expeditionary warfare.

Technologies, Synergies and Force Multipliers

Using technology to multiply the impact of military forces seems almost axiomatic. But, how do we identify which technologies in which combinations hold the most potential? Then, how do we make them decisive both in battle and across the spectrum of conflict? That is, "how do we fight smarter?" 4  The information technology at the core of network centric operations is one obvious force multiplier, but there is clearly more to the technological revolution than computers and communications. What we really are seeing are three on-going global technological revolutions, each with great military import but under only limited military control.5

    * Sensor Technologies. The revolution in sensor technologies is twofold. On one hand, there is a movement toward more and more capable sensors, especially satellite-borne sensors able to achieve near-real-time surveillance over vast areas. On the other, there is a movement toward dispersed fields of smaller, cheaper, and more numerous sensors, ultimately including those based on nano-technologies. Fields of sensors, both space-based and local, might then be netted to detect, locate, identify, track, and target potential threats or vulnerabilities, and to disseminate vast quantities of surveillance data to all levels of command. Thus, we stand to create a new "shared situational awareness" that is "global in scope and precise in detail." 6


    * Information Processing Technologies. The revolution in information technologies will bring a geometric increase in computing power and, hence, increases capabilities of all forms of computer applications including communications. Over the next 10 to 15 years, increased processing capabilities will provide the means of processing, collating, and analyzing the vast quantities of sensor data. It will provide military forces with the ability to handle those vast amounts of data quickly and begin to apply automatic correlation. It also will provide the means of distributing information7 to any designee or "shooter" anywhere in the world at near real time speeds. Over the longer term, therefore, the information revolution offers military planners what amounts to a blank check to create whatever "network" they may need to support operations.8  The limit is that of imagination rather than of technology.


    * Precision Weapons Technology. The weapons revolution is not toward increasing weapon accuracy so much as it is toward more efficient production. Current accuracy is sufficient to exploit the vast majority of potential targets in the world, but cost and limited numbers make precise weapons "silver bullets" to be used only sparingly. However, this seems poised to change. Redesign, incorporation of new electronics, lean manufacturing, and mass production can result in a sharply decrease in cost for a given level of accuracy and capability -- and, thus, increasing numbers and more widespread deployment of more lethal missiles.9  Similarly, better networking and targeting data streams from external sources can enable us to use cheaper guidance packages on precise weapons, also decreasing cost.

Separately, each of the three individual revolutions promises significant change, but only when they are taken together does the potential for the revolutionary new synergies embodied in network centric warfare begin to emerge. Without the new sensors, targeting10 would never be sufficiently broad, accurate, or timely to exploit the potential of highly accurate weapons. Without the information structure, any set of sensors would quickly submerge the system with so much data as to make it unworkable. Without adequate numbers of low-cost, precise, long-range weapons, successes in sensing and information processing could not be translated into a decisive battlefield effect. What is more, each revolution is an on-going trend that will continue for decades to come. There is no single technology or system to be mastered and incorporated into warfare, rather a continuing, uneven succession of developments will create staccato opportunities for change in our own and our adversaries' forces and capabilities.11

As we pursue network centric warfare, therefore, we must accept that there will be no immediate conclusive answer, but rather a rapidly evolving situation in which we must be able to identify and grasp technological opportunities as they occur. There also are two further complications.

-First, since the evolving sensor, information and weapons capabilities will interact and multiply each other's effectiveness in a kaleidoscope of potential synergies, we should expect a geometrically increasing set of possible outcomes.

-Second, while we must assess the utility of each new technology in the context of warfare as we know it, the technologies will also change the character of warfare dramatically.

The situation is analogous to the triple revolution in guns, armor, and propulsion that marked warship design in the fifty years between 1862 and 1912.12  That three-fold revolution introduced a period of trial and error experimentation and forced such rapid change in warship design that new units were obsolete within a few years of fleet entry. It also brought forth Mahan and a fundamental rethinking of what navies could do.

Our problem, thus, is not simply to integrate information technology into our current way of war. It is rather to manage a complex iterative process in which the synergies generated by a succession of sensor, information and weapons technological developments will redefine the character of warfare and lay the basis for a precise effects-based approach. New technologies will continually present new possibilities that will make our working concept, of necessity, a "work in progress." The changing concept will in turn suggest still more ways in which those or other technologies may be applied, and so on in an unending cycle. Our challenge is to identify the evolving synergies, to adapt them to the power projection needs of the United States on a continuing basis, and do so within the defense budgets we are likely to have.

As this suggests, a static "if you build it, they will come" approach focused solely on communications architecture would leave us just reacting to individual technology developments as they occur, and making only incremental changes. Harnessing the rolling synergies of this complex technological revolution will require a broad, long-term perspective wide that encompasses both the potential impact of the new technologies' on our military power and the derivative impact of new capabilities on our operational and strategic objectives. We must ask not simply how new technologies might handle existing tasks better, but also what we might now do that we have never been able to do before.

This would indicate that our conceptualization should start by identifying the defining military capabilities that derive from the combined impact of the sensor, information and weapons revolutions. We can then assess how those capabilities affect the character of military operations in peace and war, then how new technologies might be made to interact to produce a desired effect, and finally, how that effect might be enhanced by new organization, training, doctrine and tactics.

Precision, Speed and . Flexibility

From the military standpoint, perhaps the most striking common element in the new technologies is the increased precision and speed that may now be possible in military operations. Evolving sensors will provide more and better data, thereby enabling military operations to be more and more responsive and exact. Evolving information technology will enable us to handle the vast quantities of data from the sensors quickly, and to meld the resulting situational awareness with the information needed to control and support our forces. Increasing numbers of highly accurate weapons and forces, in turn, will enable us to exploit the information we acquire on the battlefield.13 In each case, the result of applying the technology is an increasing ability to be highly exact in our operations, and to generate a pace of operations that would not heretofore have been possible. The more successfully we develop and combine the technologies, the more exact, and the more nearly real-time our responses to battlefield threats and opportunities are likely to become. This relationship suggests that to optimize technologies or explore potential synergies, we must first understand the potential impact of precision and speed on warfare.

What do precision and speed do for us? The starting point is the realization that "precision" lies in the effects achieved and not in the arms and systems employed. We must talk in terms of effects-based warfare. To achieve precise effects, we must do more than simply identify a target or category of targets. We must know the specific political or military effect we seek at each level of war. Thus, we must identify which enemy vulnerability or target subjected to what form of duress where, when and for how long will create the precise effect we seek. This is far more than seeing where the enemy is or tracking his forces. It also means that we must be able to assess not only the potential military impact of our actions, but also the potential political, economic, or other impact upon the enemy and even upon our own public, e.g. collateral damage. Nor is that all. We also must be able to generate the right force at the right time, and then monitor measures of effectiveness that will test our success - a requirement that far transcends conventional notions of bomb damage assessment and focuses instead on enemy will. Finally, if we are really to make the most of the precision our technology permits, we must be able to do all of this reliably in the heat of battle, and quickly and accurately enough to take advantage of each fleeting opportunity.

In short, to be decisive in anything more than a one-time, pre-planned strike, we need more than speed and precision. We must be have a third element, operational flexibility, i.e. the ability to change from one rapid, precise operation or tactical engagement to another at will to exploit the opportunities and deal with the threats of a changing battlefield. We need to be able to compress a relatively complex targeting and command and control process until it fits the nearly real-time dimensions of a battlefield engagement. These requirements are at the center of ideas like "speed of command," "the ring of fires," and "time critical targeting." Each of these ideas makes intuitive sense, and each can be understood in the context of a limited engagement, such as a call for fire support or a long-range strike. The key to understanding how both the concepts and the new technologies fit together is "network centric warfare."

Network Centric Warfare and Combat Efficiency

VADM Arthur K. Cebrowski, the leading proponent of "network centric warfare," has described it in terms of the more efficient application of combat power. This idea of combat efficiency as the true measure of the success of network centric warfare clearly steps beyond the tactical C4ISR focus. It implies a fundamental change in how we think and operate as well as what we use, and it demands an understanding of how the precision, speed, and flexibility of military operations that the network can produce change what we can do with the forces we will have available.

As Cebrowski puts it, traditional military operations usually occur in stair step fashion. A mission is assigned and planned; forces are generated and coordinated; and finally, an operation is launched that concentrates this power on an assigned objective. As a result of this inaction-action cycle, military power tends to be applied in spurts. The horizontal part represents the periods of inaction during which the coordination and force generation functions are undertaken, while the vertical part of the step or "execution" equates to the power applied.



Cebrowski contends that a network centric approach to warfare would enable us to move from this highly coordinated cycle of operations ("planned synchronization") to what is effectively a smooth curve defined by a multitude of smaller, semi-independent operations ("empowered self-synchronization.") Given the power of the shared situational awareness created by the network, it would no longer would it be necessary to initiate an action, wait to see its impact or an enemy's reaction, decide on a further action, and so on, in the manner of Col. John Boyd's famed Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop.14  The availability and immediacy of information on the network would permit us to accomplish this cycle on a nearly continuous basis at all levels of command in order to achieve a new form of "empowered self-synchronized" operations. That is, the network would permit us to decentralize or flatten the command structure, taking the control function down to the lowest practicable level of command and shortening the response cycle by removing unneeded levels of command and control. Finally, as training and organization improve at all levels, the pace of the semi-independent operations should accelerate further to create a new "speed of command."

As Admiral Cebrowski's diagram underlines, the contribution of network centric operations is much more than speed. Rather, by permitting individual units to "self-synchronize" and substantially increasing the speed of operations, the network enables us to optimize the combat power of our forces and to regain "lost combat power." Put simply, it suggests that network centric warfare is not about communications. It is about combat efficiency.

Creating Disproportionate Effects

What is "combat efficiency" and how do network centric operations generate it? In essence, combat efficiency is the degree to which we can optimize the impact of military power. In effects-based warfare, this efficiency is denominated in terms of how successful a given unit of combat power was in inducing the enemy to react in the desired way. This measure is more complicated than the traditional Lanchestrian tallies of bombs dropped versus forces destroyed, but it drives to the heart of the role of precision in warfare. It says that effective military power is not a function of how fast we attrite an opposing military force, but of how well we force the enemy to yield -- and by extension how successful we are in avoiding an attrition exchange altogether. Such a definition conforms well to the challenge confronting us in the expeditionary warfare of the 21st century: to enable relatively small forward forces to create effects that are disproportionate to their numbers.

Admiral Cebrowski's discussions of network centric warfare suggest that there are in fact two distinct levels of combat efficiency. The diagram points to the first level. It outlines the potential role of network centric operations in enabling us to apply combat power better, faster, and in greater quantity. The admiral, however, clearly points beyond this limited goal and sees in the "better, faster, more" a means to something more. Speed, precision and flexibility combined with a superior knowledge of the enemy can enable us to seize and sustain the initiative on the battlefield, to "lock out" any meaningful enemy response, and to break the enemy will to resist rather than slowly grinding down his means of resisting. It is this latter second level of combat efficiency that promises the greater return, but is also the most challenging.

Better, Faster, More: The First Level of Combat Efficiency

While the admiral's depiction of the increased combat efficiency deriving from accelerated self-synchronized operations makes intuitive sense, it leaves some questions to be answered. For example, how much of the efficiency accrues from better communications and information and how much from better organization, training and doctrine? How does the power of shared situational awareness translate into increased efficiency? Further explanation is in order.

One approach to providing such an explanation is to combine VADM Cebrowski's depiction of the traditional stepped application of military power with Col. John Boyd's Observe, Orient, Decide, Act or OODA loop. Although the OODA loop was originally conceived as a tactical engagement circle, it is now commonly applied to exchanges at the operational and strategic levels as well. In this case, we will take an additional step and employ it to describe both decision making and power generation and use the orient/decide phases to equate to the period required for gathering and directing the military force to be applied. If we further look at Boyd's OODA loop not as a circular, repeating loop, but as a series of linear cycles occurring in succession over time, we can overlay these linear OODA cycles onto the step functions in the Cebrowski diagram. Boyd's Observe, Orient and Decide phases then would equate to the horizontal part of the step function or delay while the Act phase would constitute the vertical or application of force phase. Plotted on axes of time (x) versus cumulative application of military force (y), the "steps," then become OODA cycles that are repeated as often as necessary with Act adding to the total of the military force applied.



This overlay permits us to dissect the individual steps by defining what the "observe," "orient," "decide," and "act" phases might actually entail in terms of specific operational functions. By doing this, several additional insights emerge. For example, the "observe" process includes the steps necessary to acquire the intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting data needed to act. It entails getting the right sensors looking at the right targets or threats so as to collect the right data, and it includes transmitting that data, information or intelligence to the right person or system at the right time. This phase is clearly the domain of network centric warfare, of sensor-to-shooter architectures, and of concepts like nodal targeting. Thus, the observe phase lends itself very well to new information and sensor technologies and holds great promise both of significant time compression and greater precision. But, there is a limit to this compression. Precise effects-based warfare will demand more than sensor-based awareness. It will require us to identify both the specific vulnerability we need to act against and the desired result. To do this, we need to know the enemy. The process of creating such knowledge of the enemy will draw on sensor information, to be sure, and will be subject to some time compression as a result, but it is much more a matter of creating regional expertise and extensive regional and technical intelligence databases. In short, we will find ourselves reintroducing the human dimension into the loop and expanding our reliance on functions that must be carried out over months and years, and essentially, must be completed before the battle even begins. This means that the increasing speed and precision brought be new sensors and information technology can only shorten the OODA cycle to the degree that such long term collection and analysis has already been done and is available on the net.

A similar limit emerges as we move to the "orient/decide" phase15 of our redefined OODA cycle. Better information and situational awareness can help us to avoid mistakes and permit a more efficient use of assets. However, the time required to generate combat power and, hence, the length of the "orient/decide" phase is only indirectly affected by better information. This is because the timing is dictated by the succession of physical steps necessary to generate the right force in the right numbers to achieve the effect we seek. For example, we might have to move the carrier within range of the objective, plan and brief the mission, fuel and arm the aircraft, and launch the right planes to do the job, and then sustain our strikes as long as necessary to achieve our objective. Although better, more reliable information can help, the process remains a collection of physical functions that must be completed before we can produce the military power needed and apply it to an "act" phase. Each of these functions has its pace determined by the physical capabilities of the systems and people involved. The carrier can move only so fast, the planning process compressed just so far, or the flight deck operations hurried along only so much. The major "delays" associated with these physical steps in the orient/decide process are functions of how we organize, train and equip our forces, and have little to do with information flows. Hence, they stand to be improved only marginally by network centric warfare taken in its narrow connectivity sense.

Moreover, much the same is true of the "act" phase. To carry the example further, the aircraft we will have to launch must proceed to the target area, a function of distance and air speed. Then, they will have to drop or launch their weapons, a function of weapons characteristics such as stand-off range and speed. Thus, the time required to complete the "act" phase depends on the kind of forces being used and the physical parameters of the combat situation, much more than on the speed or scope of the information flow.

The lesson is clear. Optimizing the OODA cycle and increasing our "speed of command" is as much a question of finding out how to organize the information we need and how to accelerate the process of generating combat power and moving it to target as it is of speeding the forces' communications. Increasing combat efficiency, therefore, must necessarily be a multi- pronged effort.

The strike generation experiment run by the USS Nimitz in 1997 is illustrative of how changes in organization, training, and equipment can be combined with network centric approaches to warfare in order to create a more efficient use of combat forces. The purpose of the experiment was to maximize the number of sorties a carrier could generate and sustain, that is, to increase the combat efficiency of a carrier battle group. To do this, the carrier beefed up its air wing with more pilots, abandoned traditional cyclical operations16 in favor of new high-speed cyclical operations, and relied on accompanying missile ships for its air defense. The result was a demonstrated capacity to generate approximately 1,000 carrier air sorties over four days or around five times the usual number of sorties. To further enhance its impact, Nimitz also armed the aircraft it launched with precision weapons and began to define its power projection in terms of target aim points attacked rather than planes launched. Thus, if each aircraft carried four precise weapons, each of which could reliably destroy an aimpoint, then the total the effect would be one of 4,000 aim points attacked over a four day period by a single carrier.17  However, generating more sorties and attacking more aim points would be of little consequence if not accompanied by an ability to identify the right targets, prioritize them, coordinate the strikes and assess the effects of our actions at a rate at least equivalent to our ability to generate the sorties. The "effects" created by the Nimitz demonstration, thus, stemmed from two capacities: to conduct strike operations at a heretofore inconceivable rate, and to use each of those strikes to its fullest advantage.

To apply our OODA perspective, Nimitz and its air wing established a new faster physical operational cycle. By training differently, changing the way in which operations were planned and organized, and by augmenting selected personnel, they increased the speed at which their military power could be generated. However, as the changes imply, the accelerated OODA cycle that resulted was peculiar to that particular class of carrier with that particular air wing organized and trained in this specific manner embarked.18

The implications of the Nimitz demonstration are significant for several reasons. First, the Nimitz operation shows that the power generation portion of the OODA cycle and hence the cycle as a whole can be shortened by the use of better equipment, organization, training and information. And, indeed, subsequent operations by other Nimitz class carriers bear out that similar changes in equipment, organization, training and information can have a similar impact. Second, if the changes could produce different length OODA cycles, then the OODA cycles of each individual military force also may be expected to vary with equipment, training, and organization. Stated in reverse, a different class carrier with a different air wing containing different aircraft would not be expected to perform in the same way. Third, if this line of reasoning is carried a step further, we also should expect that dissimilar military forces will have different, even radically different OODA cycle lengths. For example, the Nimitz' cycle would differ from that of a cruiser firing a cruise missile, and the cruiser's OODA cycle, in turn, would differ markedly from that of a squad of Marines engaged in a fire fight. If the analogy is extended further to joint and allied forces, the same disparity should be apparent. Air Force B-2 bombers operating from bases in the United States have a demonstrably different OODA cycle from a Nimitz class carrier operating 300 miles from the battlefield.19  Similarly, any allied operation, especially one where individual national Rules of Engagement are enforced, is likely to have to deal with widely different OODA cycles. The bottom line is clear. Different kinds of combat forces with different equipment, organization and training generate distinctly different OODA cycles of very different lengths.

The battlefield represents a complex interaction among very different kinds of military forces with OODA cycles of widely varying length. To use a more specific example, at one extreme, a SEAL insertion would necessitate the acquisition of some very exact intelligence on enemy operations in the target area. Then it would require detailed planning, and rehearsal perhaps followed by a submarine transit to the operating area, a swim ashore, and a trek to the target, likely with an attendant requirement for cover of darkness. At the other extreme, the squad of Marines engaged in a fire fight, if it is to survive, must create a very short decision making/OODA cycle. Each Marine becomes the sensor, coordinator, and shooter all wrapped up into one. The members of the platoon rely on training, doctrine and the immediate presence of a platoon commander to coordinate the individual action and to sustain the pace of the exchange. However, if the squad were to require assistance, it would have to deal with forces whose reaction or OODA cycles might be very different. A call for fire to a destroyer off shore might require the ship to move into position and/or man the guns, load and fire, as well as a delay for the round fired to reach the target designated.

[Anti_Illuminati]

If the call for support went instead to a carrier off-shore, then the Marines' call for support and targeting data might have to be married with other observations as to the state of enemy anti-aircraft capabilities in and en route the target area. Then the appropriate strike or reaction package would have to be generated, crews briefed, and aircraft armed and launched. Finally, the aircraft might have to proceed to the target area and the launch of its weapons with the forward observer. Obviously in each of these cases, response time would be greatly shortened if the ship were on the gun line ready to fire or the aircraft were overhead or on strip alert nearby. However, two things are apparent:

-That, in shortening the power generation OODA cycle, improved C4ISR is only one part of a much larger operational challenge; and

-That, any effort to increase the "speed of command" must focus on the diversity of OODA cycles generated by the very different forces that are likely to play on the modern battlefield. The more diverse the forces, the greater the problem is likely to be.

The above also underlines the nature of the coordination undertaken by the combat commander. Putting the ship into a position to fire, or stationing the aircraft overhead or on strip alert nearby entails coordinating their different OODA cycles so that they can act simultaneously or when needed. This means that their "act" phases must be alligned so that all earlier aspects of force generation have already been satisfied. In battle, the commander "coordinates" the different OODA cycles of the forces under his command so that the "act" phase of each of his differing forces strikes the enemy at the same time or in some prescribed sequence.

This kind of coordination is a necessary facet of battlefield operations, however, something else needs to be borne in mind. What is happening is that the commander deliberately keeps most of his units from achieving their optimum OODA cycle length or pace of operations in order to mass effects or to be mutually supportive. To carry our example further, if it were necessary for an air strike to incapacitate an artillery position in order to enable several platoons of Marines to reach an objective, and if that in turn were contingent on the SEALs taking down a surveillance radar en route that target, then the entire operation would be tied to the pace of the SEALs. That is, by the planned synchronization of the OODA cycles, we have held our entire effort hostage to the speed of the slowest OODA cycle.



Obviously, there are many situations in which it will be operationally necessary to mass effects in order to create the greatest shock value, or to prevent the enemy from defeating our forces in detail.20  But there is a price to be paid. The result of massing forces or effects is that less force is applied than if each force, system or unit had been permitted to operate at its own optimum rate. This means foregoing those cycles of applied combat power that might have been generated by quicker paced forces during the time in question. Moreover, as Admiral Cebrowski's step diagram underlines, this massing of effects in a "planned synchronized" attack may occur time after time with the timing of each wave of massed attacks contingent on the pace of the slowest unit.21  In effect, by optimizing mass, we minimize efficiency.

Here is where the question of flexibility becomes important. Precision and speed may permit us to reduce the length of our OODA cycles and, thereby, increase the pace of our operations, but alone they are insufficient to realize the revolution -- or prevent it from backfiring. Efficiency is not enough. Rather, we must be able both to conduct rapid, semi-independent operations and to mass forces and effects as required to deal with changes in the enemy threat or to take advantage of emerging battlefield opportunities. We need to be able to change the mode, direction and objectives of our actions just as much as we need to bring speed and precision to targeting. That is, we must be flexible to a degree that we have never before managed.

Network centric operations are at the heart of this flexibility. The flexibility and the speed and precision it exploits all derive from the amalgam of information, sensors, and communications that constitutes the information back plane of network centric warfare. The "network" permits us to undertake more actions in a given time, to focus those actions better, and to act and react both faster and with more certainty. Yet, all of these "better, faster, more" attributes by themselves still add up to little more than a more efficient form of attrition. How then do we make the leap to a level of efficiency that would permit us to "break" the enemy will rather than grind down his means of waging war?

Breaking Enemy Will: The Second Level of Combat Efficiency

The first level of combat efficiency can be reduced to aim points serviced, volume of fires generated, or damage inflicted on enemy forces and capabilities. While such combat efficiency remains the critical, irreducible core of what we must be able to do, it also understates the real pay-off that may be possible with network centric approaches to warfare. In fact, the ultimate objective of the network centric warfare described by VADM Cebrowski is not to wear down the enemy's physical ability to make war at all, but to instill a sense of "shock and awe" that will create a "self-fulfilling prophecy" of defeat. These ideas and, indeed, the example of the 1940 blitzkrieg itself, suggest that the route to the next level of "combat efficiency" is not applying even greater amounts of combat power over shorter periods of time. It is instead a foreshortening of the combat itself by breaking the enemy will to resist long before his means to resist have been exhausted -- and long before the full panoply of US forces might be expected to arrive in the crisis area.

The precision, speed and flexibility that lie at the core of the concept of the "empowered self-synchronization" are, in fact, the entry point to this second dimension of combat efficiency. This "break not grind" level of combat efficiency can perhaps best be described in terms of two ideas. The first is the concept of "getting inside the enemy's OODA loop," and the second is that of inducing and/or exploiting chaos. The starting point for both ideas is the realization that "breaking" is a psychological rather than a physical process and that our efforts, therefore, need to focus on the enemy's decision making process and his ability to take action in some coherent manner.

"Getting inside the Enemy's OODA Loop"

If we return to our OODA cycle diagram, we can hypothesize that any "act" or application of combat power can be seen in two ways. From the standpoint of first level attrition, it is an effort that attacks, destroys, or in some way degrades the enemy capability to wage or sustain a war. Yet, that same "act" can also be seen as a stimulus that the enemy will "observe" and factor into his decision making process. The more significant the action on our part, the more of an effect it is likely to have on the decisions the enemy makes. This "significance" is not solely a function of how much we destroy. It is at least as much a question of what we attack, when, and how fast. If the stimulus is significant enough, the effect may be to force the enemy to reconsider his course of action and, perhaps, to begin his OODA cycle all over again, that is, we will have disrupted his OODA loop. If a succession of stimuli have a similar impact, then the effect might be not only to disrupt his OODA loop but to create an almost catatonic state of "lock out" in which the enemy can no longer react coherently.



The requirements for second level combat efficiency are stringent. If we were only concerned with a first level wearing down the enemy ability to wage war, then to increase efficiency, we would only need to increase the size and frequency of the attacks we generate, i.e. the total quantity of power applied. However, if we are trying to break the enemy's will to resist, then our actions must be tightly coordinated so as to put the right forces on the right targets or vulnerabilities at the right times so as to produce the right effect on his decision making cycle. To make matters still more difficult, what we face is not a single enemy OODA cycle in the manner of a one-v-one fighter engagement. Instead, we will have to deal with a multiplicity of different OODA cycles that, much like our own, represent different units and forces operating simultaneously at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of conflict.

A pointed, if serendipitous, example of such a disruption occurred in the Battle of Midway. In that battle, intelligence derived from breaking Japanese codes enabled the Americans to anticipate the Japanese attack. The Americans, thus, detected the Japanese carrier force first and launched the first attack. When the Japanese commander, VADM Nagumo, first received word of an American carrier in the area, and then was attacked be carrier based torpedo planes, he was obliged to reconsider his plan for an attack on Midway. He re-oriented his effort and ordered his aircraft rearmed for a fleet action. The indication of a US fleet in the area, in effect, "reset" the Japanese OODA cycle. Then, as the Japanese planes were being rearmed and their fleet's Combat Air Patrol (CAP) was engaged in low level intercept of the American torpedo planes, the dive-bombers in the disjointed American attack (the second dotted blue arrow) struck catching the Japanese carriers with decks full of planes and bombs. The chaos that they created in the ensuing minutes not only ended the whole attack on Midway, but also proved to be the turning point in the Pacific war. In effect, the sighting of one ship and the torpedo plane attack -- a relatively small application of force in the scale of the entire battle much less of the whole war -- had a decisive impact on the Japanese OODA cycle at just the right time, forcing them to begin anew.



The success at Midway was a matter of uniquely significant intelligence and breathtakingly good luck. The challenge for network centric operations is to repeat this accidental effect reliably, predictably, and at will. How do we do that? If we compare the Japanese and American OODA cycles at the time of the torpedo attack, it becomes evident that the OODA cycles were out of phase. If the American and Japanese attacks had been in phase, the strikes would have crossed in the air and struck empty decks on both sides without the disastrous consequences for the Japanese and possibly with dire consequences for the smaller number of American carriers. But, American intelligence knew the Japanese effort was coming, American reconnaissance located the Japanese fleet first, and the American carriers launched first. That is, the Americans completed their observation, orientation, and decision phases in time for the air strike "act" to hit the Japanese when they were most vulnerable, and before they could initiate a fleet action. The American success, then, rested partially on careful preparation -- the intelligence, reconnaissance, and early launch of aircraft -- as well as on the serendipity of a disjointed arrival of the strike elements over target.

If we are to emulate Midway, we must strike the enemy at the right time and then to continue to strike at the right time as often as necessary. This challenge is twofold. We must both judge the enemy's OODA cycle correctly and coordinate our own actions with great exactitude so as to make our attacks or other actions occur at the right time. To do this, our intelligence and reconnaissance inputs must be sufficiently precise and reliable to let us time the enemy OODA cycle correctly. They must include the kind of "battlespace awareness" that enabled the American fleet to get its strikes off first, to be sure, but they must also enable us to know the enemy's OODA cycle sufficiently well to identify and exploit the critical junctures.22  And, we must be able to coordinate our own actions so as to be able to sustain controlled high- tempo operations on the edge of chaos, and not just a serendipitous reinforcement of actions, like the torpedo and dive bomber aircraft at Midway. It is exactly these two challenges that we are attempting to grapple with in the ideas of network centric warfare, speed of command and battlespace awareness. However, there is an additional problem. Barring some unforeseeable breakthrough, our intelligence and reconnaissance is not likely to enable us to achieve such knowledge of the enemy reliably, consistently, or at all levels.23

How then might network centric operations enable us to bring about another Midway? One solution is to multiply the number of opportunities to repeat the Midway serendipity. The more often we provide a stimulus, the greater the chances we will have the effect we seek on the decision enemy's making process. Taken to an extreme, we can try to so overwhelm the enemy with new developments to consider that he must continually revisit his decisions, re-orient his efforts and, perhaps, pause for further observations to the point that no action is actually taken.



We could try to do this by using new sensor and information technologies to improve our C4ISR capabilities and thereby increase our pace of operations. In effect, we could apply combat power in the same increments and much the same manner as before, but would use new information technology and better communications plumbing to shorten the length of our OODA cycles and compress the time over which that power is applied. This would multiply the number of impacts on adversary decision making over a given period and increase the likelihood of striking at the "right time" to disrupt the adversary's cycle. It certainly helps, but as the time required to generate the combat power can be compressed only so much, something more is needed to achieve a greater pace and frequency of stimuli.

Another approach would be to orchestrate not one large operation at a time, but to apply the same total amount of power in more numerous if smaller increments. The length of the individual OODA cycles -- as dictated by the physical requirements for generating combat power -- might remain the same, but the overall application would be in overlapping cycles staggered so as to maintain a rapid succession of stimuli. In effect, we could build on training and a universally available "battlespace awareness" to separate our actions into smaller, semi-independent, self-synchroinized operations, each of which could generate a stimulus sufficient to affect the adversary's OODA cycles.24



This approach has obvious limitations. The more we diminish the size of our actions, the more vulnerable they will be to being defeated in detail. However, the better our command and control and battlespace awareness -- the potential fruits of network centric warfare -- and the better our knowledge of the enemy, the less risk this will entail. If we can further use the flexibility the network brings to anticipate enemy actions and to aggregate or disaggregate our actions at will, then the danger would be diminished still more.

Or finally, we can combine the last two approaches. We can both multiply the number of cycles and compress the time needed to execute each cycle. We might apply the same total amount of force in the same overlapping increments as above, but would do so over a much shorter period of time, for example, half that of the previous approach. In essence, we would use our expanded C4ISR capability to liberate individual forces to operate at something more closely approximating their OODA cycle maximums and by so doing multiply the number of OODA cycles we execute.

This suggests a very different analogy from that of Midway. The torpedo squadron attacks on the Japanese fleet acted like a rapier thrust that attacked the Japanese OODA cycle at just the critical time, a feat which we acknowledge will be difficult if not impossible to duplicate reliably. The accelerated, multiplied stimuli suggest an attack more akin to that of a swarm of bees. Even though no single unit may have a decisive impact, the overall effect is to leave the victim swinging helplessly at attackers coming from all directions and unable to mount any coherent defense save retreat.

This "swarm" approach poses a series of significant new challenges. How do we coordinate the swarm of operations so as to achieve military objectives apart from interfering -- perhaps without success -- in the enemy decision making loop?25  How do we know when to mass forces or effects so as to avoid being defeated in detail? And, how do we assess the effectiveness of our efforts and then feed the results of these assessments into the next round of orient, decide and act phases? Will the enemy know he has been defeated and cease his resistance? Or, will he simply continue to swat at the attacks until he can no longer do so, that is continue a blind attrition war?

To be effective, the "swarm" will need to work toward a unified set of military objectives under the same commander's intent. But to achieve the brief cycle times, the elements of the swarm would need to operate as largely self-contained, self-coordinated individual operations. In short, our forces would need to become self-synchronized and self-adaptive. We could then move our own operations toward the edge of chaos as needed by deliberately undertaking a proliferation of independent operations. Finally, we could use this ability to create and operate in a state of controlled chaos, that is, to conduct operations that are so fast and so unconnected as to risk spinning out of control in any but a network centric force, thereby securing an asymmetric advantage to ourselves.

This approach comes closest to the smooth empowered self-synchronization action-reaction curve proposed by VADM Cebrowski. It also begins to lay the foundation for a new understanding of how we might induce chaos. In essence, we provide so many stimuli that the adversary can no longer act coherently, but constantly must revisit the earlier stages of his OODA cycle to ask. "Does the act which just struck me invalidate the assumptions upon which my currently intended course of action rest? Does it demand a redirection of my effort? Will an additional attack come and will it force me into revisiting my plans yet again?" The result would be a catatonic inability to act, that is, a "lock out."

Exploiting Chaos

The principle of chaos in warfare is not new.26  It is as rooted in Sun Tzu as it is in Napoleon. Clausewitz talks in terms of exploiting the fog and friction of war to drive the enemy into a rout, that is, into a state of chaos.27  The essence of the German blitzkrieg in 1940 was that it induced so much chaos into French and British efforts that a coherent defense was no longer possible and resistance collapsed more or less simultaneously at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. The German success rested on a combination of new technologies used in a bold new "lightening" thrust by armored columns that left Allied forces no time to form an ordered defense. In brief, the Germans operated at such a speed and with such flexibility that they instilled "shock and awe" and created a "powerful self-fulfilling prophecy" of defeat and French resistance at all levels collapsed.

Recent writings on "chaos" 28 theory have drawn a comparison between the concept of chaos in physical systems and its application to warfare. They point out that the boundary between chaos and order is particularly important because that boundary is a region in which very small inputs or changes in system parameters can have very large impacts on the whole system, and even cause it to collapse. The implication for military operations is that we might be able to create situations in which relatively small applications of military power can have a highly disproportionate and potentially decisive impact. This ability would have a particular significance for expeditionary warfare and forward presence because it is a way in which the relatively small numbers of forces that can be maintained forward or deployed quickly might be able to use speed, precision, and flexibility to be decisive in peace or war.

The idea sounds good but leaves many questions. How do we define this boundary in operational terms? How do network centric operations permit us to exploit it? One approach is to define this edge of chaos in terms of the intensity of the military operations. We can describe this intensity in terms of the pace and the scale/ scope of operations, as plotted along the x and y axes of the graph below. We can understand intuitively that the more we increase the pace of our operations (x), the more difficult they will be to control or focus. Similarly, the more we increase the scope and scale of our operations (y), the more difficult they will be to control. By extension, we also can surmise that, at some point along the x axis, there would lie an operation so rapid that we will no longer be able to coordinate or focus it. Similarly, at some point along the y axis, there will be an operation of such a size or scope, e.g. global thermonuclear war, as to cause us to lose control of our forces and to lapse into chaos. In short, we can identify a set of two transition points from order into chaos. Figuratively, then, the "edge of chaos" would be a line drawn between these two points that touches all the various combinations of scale/scope and pace of operations that define the limit of what we can control or coordinate, i.e., a set comprising all of our order-to-chaos transition points. Beyond this line, lies a region of operations that are so large and/or so rapid that we cannot hope to execute them and remain a coherent viable force, that is, the zone of chaos. Within the line, lie all of the operations we can control, that is, the zone of order.



In this context, "chaos" can be understood as a zone within which military operations become so rapid and/or assume such a scale and scope as to become uncontrollable, thus, un-focused, incoherent or chaotic, such as in an "every man for himself" battlefield rout.29  The opposite of this battlefield chaos is "order" -- military operations whose scale, scope and pace permit them to be precisely controlled, coordinated, and focused on a given objective.30  Historically, when armies and navies have met in battle, at least one tactical objective has been to drive the enemy force from order into chaos. But how do we identify or create situations in which we can do this reliably, with a minimum of force, and without risking to lose control of our own forces? That is, how can we identify and exploit an operational edge of chaos?

By defining these transition points in terms of the size and pace of operations that can be successfully generated and controlled, something else becomes obvious. The edge of chaos is not fixed. It is constantly changing. As the Nimitz demonstration underlined, the better trained and organized our force is and the better its command and control system and its integration of sensors and weapons, the greater the scale and pace of operations it will be able to sustain without losing control.31  Stated differently, a highly trained and organized force using sophisticated equipment will be able to operate safely at a pace and scale of operations that would cause a less well-trained and equipped force to lapse into chaos. Better equipment, training, and organization, therefore, can enable us to drive our transition points further out along the x and y axes and define a new edge of chaos.

However, this implies something else as well. Just as the OODA cycle varied from one force to another, the edge of chaos will vary from one force to the next. Not only will the forces be composed of different units, differently equipped, manned, trained and organized, but each unit may be expected to evolve over time as these factors change as, for example, in battle. This suggests that the opposing forces in any battle are likely to have very different edges of chaos specifically because their personnel, equipment, training and organization are different. Thus, if we were to plot an adversary's edge of on the same graph with our own, we probably would find two different sets of transition points and two distinctly different edges of chaos.

In fact, these two different edges of chaos define three zones:


    * Zone 1 encompasses all the combinations of scale/ scope and pace of operations in which neither side will be able to control or focus, that is, the zone of chaos;


    * Zone 2 defines a complex asymmetric region in which our better equipped and trained forces will be able to control and focus our operations while the enemy will be unable to do so; and


    * Zone 3 encompasses all the combinations of scale/scope and pace of operations in which both sides will be able to maintain control and focus, that is, the zone of order.

By definition, neither side will be able to operate successfully in the zone of chaos (Zone 1), and we would derive no special tactical advantage from operating at a scale and pace of operations that permits the enemy an orderly focused response, that is the zone of order (Zone 3).32  However, the boundary region represented by Zone 2 offers the prospect of the kind of disproportionate impact outlined in chaos theory. It is a zone of inherent complexity and asymmetry in which superior information, training, organization and equipment can enable us to operate at a rate, scope and scale that the enemy simply cannot match. We can use this asymmetry to confront the enemy with a dilemma. If he attempts to react to our rapid paced attacks, he is likely to lose control of his own forces and cross the line into chaos, but if he fails to react, he stands to be either pummeled into submission or confined to time-late, pre-planned actions.33  In short, we can use our ability to operate beyond the enemy's edge of chaos to induce a state of despair in which further resistance either is, or appears to be, futile. By extension, we can accelerate this process by using the information network to focus our efforts precisely on those vulnerabilities that will drive the enemy into a state of chaos.

How does this relate to the empowered self-synchronized operations to which VADM Cebrowski refers? Strangely enough one good example is the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar in which Admiral Nelson destroyed the combined French and Spanish fleets. The essence of that battle was Nelson's bold move to break through the French-Spanish battle line in two places and then concentrate his forces on bite-sized portions of the enemy fleet. The basis for Nelson's confidence that such a risky operation could be successful was what could be described as a cerebral networking that had been created among Nelson and his ship captains to whom he referred as a "band of brothers." That networking had been formed by more than eight years of combat operations together. Nelson, therefore, was confident that all of his subordinates would perceive the developing situation in the same way, that is, they would have a shared situational awareness.34  He was equally sure that his commanders not only understood his commander's intent, but that they would exploit aggressively any opening in the enemy line and carry through mutually supportive actions without further direction. Thus, Nelson's directive to the fleet on the day of battle could be limited to a single, inspiring, if not otherwise very helpful, "England expects every man to do his duty." Nothing more was needed. The commanders knew what to do.

This contrasts sharply with the situation of the opposing commander Admiral Villeneuve-Joyeuse. His force was larger than that of Nelson and in many ways technologically superior, however, it lacked any semblance of the cerebral networking that Nelson had forged with his subordinate commanders. The French commanders were either new or had spent the war years blockaded in port. They distrusted each other even as Villeneuve distrusted his own judgment. Added to this was the problem of coordinating operations with a separate Spanish fleet with which the French had never before operated. The best Villeneuve could do was to form the fleet into a conventional eighteenth century line of battle in which two opposing fleets in ordered, parallel battle lines would pound each other until one or the other struck or sank. This was the limit of his ability to control an operation of this scope and complexity.

When Nelson refused battle on these terms and instead broke through the French-Spanish line, the increased pace of operation that he forced on Villeneuve immediately exceeded what the French-Spanish ability to cope and invalidated their numerical superiority. Villeneuve lost the ability to fight a coherent battle and largely lost control of all his forces save his own flagship. His ships, although bravely fought, became part of general chaos in which substantial French and Spanish forces never entered the battle.

What the ideas of network centric warfare do is to permit us to, after a fashion, replicate the cerebral networking of Nelson's band of brothers without the preceding eight years of combat operations together and without the common situational awareness possible in a slowly developing eighteenth century naval battle.35  They also have the potential to permit us to do something more than: to use information, speed, and precision to create a multi-level strategic, operational, and tactical collapse analogous to the blitzkrieg of 1940. That suggests that our basic RMA challenge is to improve sensing, targeting, power projection and generation, and so on, both to create a Zone 2 asymmetry and to exploit it.

.and Asymmetric Warfare?

There is a hitch. However mesmerizing Nelson's band of brothers may be, we need to stretch our reasoning further and ask, what would happen if the Zone 2 situation were reversed? What if the enemy could manage a pace of operations greater than our own in a given area of competition? What if the conflict were a Viet Nam or Somalia and not a Desert Storm? Under these conditions the enemy's edge of chaos may not lie entirely within our own as diagrammed. Instead, the two edges of chaos would cross, and we would be confronted with a fourth zone in which the situation was reversed. The enemy would be capable of undertaking operations of a pace and scope to which we could not respond quickly or effectively.

[Anti_Illuminati]

In fact, the potential for such a reversal points to a dangerous underlying assumption in much RMA thinking: that the US will always be superior because it will always be faster and better. The reality is that the pace of operations is not solely a function of technology, but can also be created by decentralizing operations so as to conduct larger numbers of smaller operations. This is much the same as we undertook to do in multiplying the number of OODA cycles in hope of disrupting the enemy decision making cycle. Here too, the foe can choose to trade centralized control for speed and scope of operations. In so doing, he may lose at least some of his ability to mass effects or to concentrate the weight of his forces on a specific objective. However, if the effect he seeks derives from the pace and scope of the attacks rather than from the amount of destruction, or derives from a cumulative effect, then the trade-off may be very acceptable. In other words, the enemy could create a fourth zone in which he could operate successfully using small units and decentralized control, but in which we could not respond coherently using large formations and centralized control. That is, he could attempt to confront us in a zone where our traditional approaches to controlling forces in combat can become counterproductive.

The importance of this fourth zone is even more evident if we look at the respective edges of chaos plotted on a graph with three axes: one for pace, one for scale, and a separate orthogonal axis for scope. Here, the enemy has two measures he can take. He can decentralize his forces breaking them into smaller self-synchronized units, and he can disperse them over a wide area to make a coordinated and timely response on our part more difficult.



In fact, this corresponds rather closely to the second stage in the Maoist theory of guerrilla warfare. The guerrillas use dispersed formations so small that they can no longer be targeted effectively by the heavier forces of the enemy. These forces then conduct large numbers of small raids across the breadth of the countryside that are so dispersed and rapid as to be completed before larger scale opposing forces can be brought to bear.36  Their objective is first to challenge the government's control of the countryside, then to seize control of the countryside and isolate the cities, and finally, to use the control of the countryside to attack the remaining government bastions in the cities. Since the effect of this approach depends on the pace and scope of the operations rather than damage to any specific set of targets or forces, the control of the operations can remain highly decentralized.37  This was the essential problem we confronted in Viet Nam.

Mohammed Aideed used a variation of this approach adapted to urban warfare in Mogadishu. Aideed's forces, often little more than disorganized bands of street fighters, operated on a decentralized basis in an urban jungle staying below the size threshold for effective US and allied reaction but maintaining an almost continuous harassment of allied forces with these small units. In Aideed's case, the objective was not to defeat US military forces or take and hold urban territory, but rather to block effective action by US forces and inflict casualties that would lead to US withdrawal and a political vice military victory.

This discussion and these examples imply a slightly different understanding of chaos. They infer that chaos need not be solely a loss of control over one's forces. It could also be a situation in which the size of the forces involved and delays associated with generating and using such combat power prevent us from accomplishing our objectives, a zone in which the use of large units and centralized control becomes self-defeating.

How might network centric warfare address this dilemma? Obviously, one aspect of the applicability of network centric operations is the power of superior knowledge and shared situational awareness. Together, they would clearly reduce the freedom of action that an enemy might gain by dispersing and decentralizing his forces. However, the key to denying the enemy an exploitable asymmetry is to operate faster than our decentralized foe. We must move our own edge of chaos further out along the x axis of the diagram until decentralized operations no longer confer any advantage on the enemy and until our own flexibility enables us to mass our superior scale of power at will. We can do this by increasing either the number of operations we undertake or the speed at which we accomplish them. By decentralizing, the guerrilla or street fighter has opted for increasing the number and decreasing the size of operations. We might respond by doing the same, as for example, by resorting to a small unit ground war. Or, we could increase the pace of our operations along the lines outlines in the discussion of first level combat efficiency. Or again, we could use some combination of the two. In each case, precise, information-based, network centric abilities enable us to safely increase the pace of our actions because the network enables us to retain control in high-speed complex operations. More significantly, the network enables us to operate our forces as -- in the terminology of chaos theory -- a "self-adjusting complex adaptive system." That is, we can decentralize our operations to whatever degree is most effective and efficient giving local commanders the control envisioned in "empowered self-synchronization." At the same time we retain the dominance of scale and can mass effects while matching or nearly matching the pace and scope of enemy operations at will.

Achieving this second level of combat efficiency can sound like an almost impossible task, but in fact, the effort forces us to begin to define the basic requirements for implementing a network centric effects-based warfare. In effect, the evolving rough concept of what we are trying to do gives us an increasing understanding of what we will need. That understanding lets us approach the on-going technological revolutions with specific requirements, while the revolutions, in turn, provide us with a new grasp of what might be possible.

Conclusion: A Reality Check

If we are to be clear minded about network centric warfare, we must acknowledge both that there is indeed "beef" in the concept, but also that there are risks involved. Certainly, empowered self-synchronized operations can leave forces open to defeat in detail. Certainly, operating at the pace, scale, scope and complexity that is being proposed can leave us skirting chaos ourselves if we are not careful. In both cases, the networking of combat resources and the shared awareness promises to avoid the peril while realizing the advantages of speed, precision and flexibility. However, therein lies an additional risk. If we adopt a network centric approach to warfare, how well will we be able to function if the network is somehow degraded? Could we unwittingly be building a single point failure into our nation's military capability? There are as yet no definitive answers to these questions and concerns. Answers to them and to hundreds more questions yet to surface will have to be worked out in years of effort still ahead.

What we do know is that we must proceed. Balancing these risks is the enduring American need for effective power projection. Like it or not, we will have to depend on relatively small numbers of forward forces to create decisive effects for conventional deterrence, peacekeeping and peacemaking, crisis response, and conflict -- all in the face of an adversary's best efforts to prevent their success. This will clearly necessitate reliance on force multipliers and some form of network centric operations. The real issue is not whether we need to do so, but how we get there. (11,759 words)

1  The Observe, Orient, Decide, Act cycle that Col. John R. Boyd USAF used to characterize a fighter engagement and that has come to be applied to the decision making process in general. John R. Boyd, "A Discourse on Winning and Losing," Air University, August 1987.

2  The process to identify the actions, the reactions and the linkages between occurs separately but interdependently at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of warfare. Properly carried out it should produce a cascading designation of increasingly specific effects and military objectives. The strategic impact desired is defined by the National Command Authority is defined and tasked to the CINC or JTF operational commander who translates that impact into sets of military objectives to achieve them. These are then tasked to the appropriate tactical level commanders who identify and task the specific military actions to achieve them.

3  This was the central idea in Forward.From the Sea that spoke of a series of overseas "hubs" from which sea-based American power radiated.

4  ADM J.M. Boorda, Address to the Naval Strategy Forum, 14 June 1995.

5  Walter Morrow, "Technology for a Naval Revolution in Military Affairs," Second Navy RMA Round Table, 4 June 1997.

6  Ibid

7  Although the word "information" will be used here in the current broad understanding encompassing both intelligence and surveillance data, it is worth noting the distinctions draw in the intelligence lexicon. In this usage, "data" is the raw untouched input direct from a source or sensor with no attempt made to judge its validity or accuracy. "Information" is data that have been collated to establish a relationship with other known facts. "Intelligence," then, is information that has been analyzed to derive the meaning and implications of the information, that is, in the sense of "knowledge of the enemy." These same distinctions apply to the terms "data," "information," and "knowledge."

8  The almost geometric rate of change in information and other technologies turns our Cold war link between technology and strategy on its head. Rather than carefully developing military technologies in government programs and then applying the capabilities developed in the context of new strategies and tactics, post-Cold War technologies are largely developed for a civilian market and at a rate far faster than government efforts during the Cold War. In effect, the pace of change is uncontrolled and threatens to outstrip our strategic and tactical imagination.

9  This trend is already evident in the falling unit price of the Navy Tomahawk cruise missile from $1.2 million ten years ago, to less than $700 thousand in 1998, to the prospect of $300 or less before the next decade is out - a roughly 50%drop every ten years. RADM Daniel Murphy, "Surface warfare," Navy RMA Round Table, 4 June 1997.

10  To think in terms of "effects," the word "target" must be used in its broadest sense, not in the traditional context of facilities and forces to be destroyed by attacking it with weapons, but as a focus of our actions, a vulnerability to be exploited.

11  Notice that this coincides very directly with the idea that a true RMA needs to be successful on the strategic and operational level even more than on the tactical if it is to achieve victory.

12  That is, the period between the Monitor and the Merrimac and the birth of naval aviation.

13  The weapons will give us the ability to destroy, degrade, isolate, etc. the targets developed and selected by a command structure that is able to observe the unfolding of its plans in near-real time and that is thus in a position to adapt to changes as they occur.

14  John R. Boyd, "A Discourse on Winning and Losing," Air University, August 1987.

15  In Boyd's tactical engagement loop, "orient" and "decide" are separated into two phases, however, this separation becomes difficult to distinguish in more complex operations, especially at the operational and strategic levels of war. As used in this paper, the orient and decide phases are combined and used to define the period of time necessary to generate the right force to achieve the right effects.

16  The carrier air wing started with intense "flex-deck" operations but soon discovered that the flight deck became unworkable. They, therefore, switched to an aggressive concept of cyclical operations that enabled them to launch more aircraft while maintaining better order on the flight deck. Interview with RADM John Nathman, 11 February 1999.

17  Although the demonstration ran for four days, the "surge" need not have stopped there. If the carrier had then been rearmed and replenished from accompanying resupply ships, the rate could have been maintained, with brief periods off-line, through successive "surges." If multiple carriers had been operated as a battle force, not only could the numbers been further multiplied, but the carriers could have been rotated through the replenishment cycle so as to sustain an uninterrupted high level of strikes for some protracted period of time. Ibid.

18  In the Nimitz case, this meant an air wing composed of low maintenance, quick turnaround F/A-18's that could readily undertake five or more sorties per day.

19  The more joint the forces applied to the problem, the more different the OODA cycles are likely to be. The Libya bombing in April 1986 is a good example. Although initially planned as a carrier air strike, the inclusion of Air Force F-111's operating from bases in the United Kingdom, while militarily sound from the standpoint of capabilities, introduced a completely different set of operational time lines including a need to secure overflight permission -- in any event denied.

20  The D-Day invasion of Normandy is one example. The success of the Allied attack hinged on so overwhelming the local German resistance with massed forces or effects that the allies could get ashore and establish a defensible beach head. That meant coordinating an almost inconceivable range and variety of operations to cut interior German lines of communications simultaneously.

21  This is similar to the speed of convoys during World War I and II. The speed of the convoy was that of the slowest ship. Consequently, convoys were separated into slow and fast depending on the ships' fastest speed. The slower the speed the greater was the vulnerability to U-boat operations, but the consequences of a failure to convoy were still higher losses. This dilemma was one reason the British resisted convoying at the beginning of each war.

22  In the Midway example, because the forces were very similar in character, the length of the US and Japanese OODA cycles would have been roughly similar. In a conflict between two dissimilar forces, that would not be the case making the OODA cycle that much more difficult to predict.

23  Despite the best surveillance picture or "battlespace awareness" we can generate, the ultimate determinate of the speed and direction of the enemy decision making cycle will be the enemy himself. Such "knowledge of the enemy" is not the result of sensor data but of analysis based in large part on sporadic human intelligence reporting. We cannot, therefore, depend on having the intelligence when we need it or, indeed, on collecting the needed data at all.

24  Note that in each case the total amount of force applied remains constant and that what varies is the way in which that force is applied.

25  The caveat on military revolutions warns us to be prepared to deal with the question "what is if it does not work." Thus, actions undertaken by the swarm cannot focus solely on the potential impact on the decision making cycle, particularly if, as noted earlier, it is unlikely that we will have enough information to predict that process with great exactitude.

26  It should be noted that the idea of inducing chaos will hardly be a new concept to ground forces for whom the primordial challenge is to control very large numbers of actors in battle. In the ground context, "breaking the enemy will to resist" equates to causing the enemy to lose control and disintegrate into a chaotic "every man for himself" rout. While this understanding remains operative to be sure, the focus of the chaos sought here lies at the operational and even the strategic level even more than of the battlefield.

27  Barry Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, NDU, Washington, D.C. pp. 105ff.

28  Maj. James uses the example of a water faucet that will drip with an annoying regularity. As the flow of water is increased the frequency of the drip increases but the regularity remains. However, when the flow is increased even minutely beyond some definable rate, the drops no longer have time to form and the drip changes abruptly to a sporadic -- that is chaotic -- flow. The very minor increase in flow has caused the physical system to become chaotic.
Maj. Glenn James USAF, Chaos Theory, The Essentials for Military Applications, Newport Paper 10, Naval War College, Newport, R.I.: 1997, p. 15-16.

29  It is worth making a distinction here between a tactical level chaos that induces the enemy to take flight and a strategic level chaos that may induce irrational behavior. The latter would be a very dangerous development in the case of a power armed with nuclear weapons or prepared to resort to terrorism. Between these two extremes lies in which inducing "shock and awe" is a tool that can be used to achieve specific effects calculated to support our political and military objectives. However, implicit in the idea of effects is a risks versus gains analysis that applies to chaos as to all other effects.

30  The model that springs to mind is that of the Army of the Potomac under McClellan during the Civil War. The Army was so perfectly ordered that it was only reluctantly and hesitantly committed to battle and failed to press the South's vulnerabilities or produce a decisive victory. By contrast, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia operated close to the edge of chaos. It foraged for supplies, moved and struck with an efficiency that put it well inside the OODA loop of a succession of Union generals. By 1865, however, Grant's unyielding pressure had pinned down the Army of Northern Virginia in front of Richmond and Petersburg and deprived it of this ability. Indeed, from the standpoint of logistics, Grant turned the table on Lee and drove Lee's supply system into chaos.

31  In the Nimitz demonstration, the air wing set out to conduct "flex-deck" operations which were thought to offer the fastest turnaround and sortie generation. What they soon discovered was that this "clobbered" the deck making it difficult to move even as many aircraft as they routinely did. In effect, they had reached the edge of chaos for flex-deck operations. Then, they adapted to the new requirement, and instituted a new form of accelerated cyclic operations that not only avoided the previous bottlenecks but enabled them to operate comfortably at the new higher pace. Nathman, Op. Cit.

32  It should be noted here that under some circumstances such as in a confrontation with a nuclear armed opponent, it may be necessary to operate in this zone of order so as to avoid the risk of an irrational act or and uncontrolled escalation.

33  One example of this is the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The Egyptian Army's "edge of chaos" could not hope to match that of the Israelis. Therefore, the Egyptians were forced to resort to a highly planned pre-emptive operation in which virtually all actions were pre-scripted. That gave them an initial success in crossing the Suez Canal, but left them largely incapable of responding to Israeli counter-action.

34  As the two fleets took more than three hours to close, there would have been a fairly comprehensive common situational awareness by the time the battle began.

35  Nelson's approach to the opposing fleet at the slow pace of a sailing ship would have allowed ample time for the commanders to observe the enemy line and any potential gaps in that line that they might exploit. The cerebral networking provided a common understanding of how such gaps might be exploited and how each might provide mutual support and exploit any further opportunities that might be observed during the battle.

36  While the length of the OODA cycle of any individual enemy action may be longer than our own network aided cycle, the aggregate impact on our own operations can be almost continuous in the manner of a hailstorm. This would be especially true if the "effect" sought by the enemy derived not from levels of destruction or military objectives achieved but from the sheer quantity of stimuli presented over time.

37  The most difficult task in a guerrilla war is identifying the moment to shift from this decentralized warfare used to wear down enemy resistance and confine him to the cities, to the more centralized effort that will be required to take control of the cities and the entire country.   

[Anti_Illuminati]

Reposted from here

The MIAA enables military information architects to create and maintain a structured, comprehensive, living "information back plane"--a set of integrated architecture models--that helps decision makers plan for and manage change in the information-related capabilities that are critical to the success of military operations and enterprises.

The MIAA creates and automatically enforces a consistent taxonomy (artifacts, interrelationships and rules) throughout all operational, system, and technical view products with domain-specific metamodels based on concepts and behavior rules adapted from the DoD C4ISR Architecture Framework, the CADM, and operational experience. The MIAA also incorporates the ability to organize architecture data according to Zachman, Boer and other architecture frameworks, and provides file-based interfaces to the Joint C4ISR Architecture Planning System (JCAPS) and powerful discrete event simulation capability (Design/CPN).

The Ptech Military Information Architecture Accelerator (MIAA) is based upon ideas and products outlined in the DoD C4ISR Architecture Framework, Version 2.1.  That document is “intended to ensure that the architectures developed by the geographic and functional unified Commands, military Services, and defense Agencies are interrelatable between and among organizations’ operational, systems, and technical architecture views, and are comparable and integrateable across Joint and multi-national organizational boundaries.”

Ptech’s military architecture capability addresses these intentions, enabling military information architects to:

    * construct fully integrated, interactive, C4ISR Architecture Framework-compliant models of the entire set of architectural data, and confirm the completeness and self-consistency of the data set
      
    * conduct initial analyses of the data set or any subset thereof
      
    * share both the model views and the analysis products among all stakeholders via web publishing and reporting

Our  consultants can help you design and capture your architecture data within a single, concordant KnowledgeBase.  This interactive, “living architecture” will enable you to represent and analyze data you have now, and will also form the basis for planning, assessing and managing future changes.”

Details

The Ptech Military Information Architecture Accelerator rests upon a conceptual model which governs the behavior of the modeling environment.  This conceptual model includes classes and associations arranged in a set of metamodels whose rules were adapted from C4ISR Architecture Framework, V. 2.1, CADM, and practical experience.  Our object-oriented modeling environment allows you to capture and analyze data in a single concordant KnowledgeBase.  All diagrams modeled in FrameWork are linked to each other through the metamodels that govern them and the objects they contain.  In FrameWork, you can also attach subdiagrams to objects, providing as much “drill-down” capability as the architecture may require.  Customized forms and reports augment the KnowledgeBase,  offering text-based interfaces to the information.  Taken together, these capabilities enable architects to slice and dice comprehensive, complex architecture data in a variety of ways.

Our Version 1.5 release supports modeling and reporting capabilities for:

      Operational Products: OV-1, OV-2, OV-3, OV-4, OV-5, OV-6a, OV-6b, OV-6c,

      System Products: SV-1, SV-2, SV-3, SV-4, SV-5, SV-6, SV-7, SV-8, SV-9, SV-10a, SV-10b, SV-10c

      Technical Products: TV-1, TV-2

      Other Products: AV-2

      Upcoming Products include: OV-7 and SV-11

The current release represents a step along the path toward the final version, which will incorporate the essential and supporting DoD Architecture Framework products.  Future releases will integrate these products, and maintain compatibility with prior versions.

What's New

Available Updates

Please contact us for the lastest versions

    * AV-2 Report Templates
    * Demonstrator KnowledgeBase

Strategic Partnerships

USAF SBIR 2000-116:  Decision Support System for Command and Control Acquisition (Phase I)

    * Created an interface between FrameWork and Design/CPN
    * Enables users to take their architectures to a high-quality simulation and conduct sensitivity analyses to support executive decision makers
    * Enables high-quality prediction of architecture performance and sensitivity analyses

JCAPS Interface development effort

    * USSTRATCOM-funded effort to create two-way batch file interface between FrameWork and JCAPS repository
    * Enables users to leverage unique capabilities of each system

Continuing Enterprise Architecture efforts in government & industry

    * FEAF, TEAF, IRS AF, ITAA
    * Will advance the theory and practical application of Information Architecture in general--should speed incorporation of specific additional capabilities

E-mail Our Support Staff

To report trouble or ask questions about the MIAA base extension, send a detailed email to:

C4ISR_Support@ptechinc.com
________________________________________________________________________
Technical Architecture Products

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE PRODUCTS:

TV-1:  Technical Architecture Profile Matrix

      The TV-1 report enables analysis of the impact and timing of changing technologies on all systems.  FrameWork gives you the ability to make internodal, intranodal and intrasystem perspectives.  

TV-2:  Standards Technology Forecast Matrix

      The TV-2 report enables analysis of the impact and timing of changing standards on all systems.  FrameWork gives you the ability to make internodal, intranodal and intrasystem perspectives.  
________________________________________________________________________
Operational Architecture Products

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE OPERATIONAL ARCHITECTURE PRODUCTS:

OV-1:  High-level Operational Concept Graphic

      The OV-1 model diagram is intended to represent a general overview to the lines of communication in your architecture.  In FrameWork, it is a fully integrated subset of the data that adds significant richness and value on its own, and functions as a gateway to the rest of your KnowledgeBase.  

OV-2:  Operational Node Connectivity Description

      The OV-2 contains data on needlines and information exchanges between operational nodes.  Through our forms interface, FrameWork allows you to enter one or more IERs per needline, as well as record specific characteristics for each IER.  Our OV-2 model diagram also offers you the capability to organize operational nodes according to functional and process areas.

(Image not available)
OV-3:  Operational Information Exchange Matrix

      The OV-3 matrix reports on the IER specifications including media, quality, quantity, and direction, emphasizing the logical and operational characteristics.  In FrameWork, the matrix is created through our code generation capability and output as a spreadsheet file.  

OV-4:  Command Relationships Chart

      The OV-4 depicts relationships among organizations in your architecture.  FrameWork supports Command, Coordination, and Internal Command relationship types, and also includes a feature designed to create user-defined relationships.  

OV-5: IDEF-like Activity Model

      The OV-5 describes activities and the exchange of information between those activities.  In FrameWork, you can build activity hierarchies, and IDEF-like activity models, including ICOMs and external exchanges.  

OV-6a:  Operational Rules Model

      The OV-6a captures business requirements and their relationshsips with operational activities in the form of structural assertions, action assertions and derivation assertions.  FrameWork also allows you to relate rules to Guidance Statements and Information Exchanges.  

OV-6b:  Operational State Transition Description

      The OV-6b describes the sequencing of activities in your operational architecture according to external or internal events, and business rules.

OV-6c:  Operational Event/Trace Description

      The OV-6c may be used in conjuction with the OV-6b to highlight a critical sequence of events.  The OV-6c also incorporates operational nodes that must take action based on  certain events within a specified time frame.  
________________________________________________________________________
Most of the images for the following are unavailable, 2 were however.

System Architecture Products

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE PRODUCTS:

SV-1:  System Interface Description

      The System Interface Description behaves as an intermediary between operational and system views, showing generalized representations of communication pathways and networks.  FrameWork gives you the ability to make internodal, intranodal and intrasystem perspectives.  

SV-2:  System Communications Description

      While the Interfaces on the SV-1 represent logical constructs, the Links depicted on the SV-2 represent actual physical pathways between Systems.  System and Link specifications such as status, classification, and interoperability level, are entered through supporting forms.  

SV-3:  System2 Matrix

      The SV-3 matrix reports on the system-to-system interface relationships created on the SV-1.  FrameWork creates the matrix through our code generation capability, whose output may be accessed through any spreadsheet application. Our matrix organizes systems according to their applicable functional and process areas.  

SV-4:  System Funtionality Description

      The SV-4 depicts the data flows between system functions.  In FrameWork, you can drill-down into the data flows to relate them with data exchanges and specific data elements.  You may also use the SV-4 to depict system functionality hierarchies.  

SV-5:  Operational Activity to System Funtion Traceability Matrix

      The SV-5 reports on interrelated leaf-level operational activities and system functions.  In FrameWork, you can automatically generate the SV-5 matrix as a spreadsheet report, once all the associations between activities and system functions exist in your architecture.  

SV-6:  System Data Exchange Requirements Matrix

      The SV-6 report is similar to the concept of the OV-3. It is a detailed report about all system data exchange requirements and the actual data exchanges that satisfy them.  

SV-7:  System Performance Parameters Matrix

      The SV-7 report is a detailed report that expresses the hardware and software elements that make up systems along with the parameters against which the system or element's performance will be measured, and to record details about the measurement.  

SV-8:  System Evolution Discription Description

      The SV-8 describes plans for modernizing an enterprise over time, capturing the sytems involved, the migration timeline and pertinent milestones.  

SV-9:  System Technology Forecast Matrix

      The SV-9 report is a detailed spreadsheet of the impact and timing of changing technologies on selected systems.  

SV-10a:  System Rules Model

      The SV-10a  captures contraints of system design or implementation as they are related to system functions.  These system rules may be structural assertions, action assertions or derivation assertions.  

SV-10b:  Systems State Transition Description

      The SV-10b is the systems counterpart to the OV-6b.  It describes events and states at the system level, and shows the sequencing of system functions.  

SV-10c:  Systems Event/Trace Description

      The SV-10c extends the SV-10b to allow the tracing of a critical sequence of events.  On the systems side, the SV-10c reflects the system aspects of the events described in the operational event/trace description.  
__________________________________________________________________

FLTC Perspective

Focused Long Term Challenges (FLTCs) are an innovative approach
to match user requirements with relevant technology development,
while also leveraging from existing multi-directorate research.
The eight  FLTCs created are focused to address all threat areas
addressed in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Of the eight
shown on the graphic, there are four with specific application to the
Information Directorate, identified on the following slides or link.

Focused Long Term Challenges

1.  Anticipatory Command, Control & Intelligence (C2I)

2.  Unprecedented Proactive Surveillance & Reconnaissance (S&R)

3.  Dominant Difficult Surface Target Engagement/Defeat

4.  Persistent & Responsive Precision Engagement

5.  Assured Operations in High Threat Environments

6.  Dominant Offensive Cyber Engagement

7.  On-demand Theater Force Projection, Anywhere

8.  Affordable Mission Generation & Sustainment

AFRL/IF FLTC Emphasis
Categories

#1 - Anticipatory C2I

#5 - Assured Operations in High Threat Environments

#6 - Dominant Offensive Cyber Engagement

#7 - On-Demand Theater Force Projection

FLTC #1 Anticipatory Command, Control & Intelligence (C2I)

Anticipate Enemy Actions and Respond with Synchronized Management of Battlespace Effects

Find Threatening Systems and Objects

Predict Adversary Behaviors

Perform Near-Real Time Decision Management

Assure Fully Effective C2 Operators

Conduct On-Demand Collaboration Across Operator and Sensor Systems

FLTC #5  Assured Operations in High Threat Environments

Achieve Mission Objectives With Impunity Against Full Spectrum Threats, from Anti-Access IADS to Cyber

Anticipate and Avoid Threats Through Stealth and Deception

Detect and Defeat Threats Through Active Defenses

Survive the Attack Through Passive and Adaptive Protection

Recover from Threat Effects

FLTC #6  Dominant Offensive
Cyber Engagement

Conduct full spectrum offensive cyber/info ops against military, leadership, and infrastructure

Access Adversary’s Cyber/Info Systems Anywhere, Anytime

Operate with Stealth and Persistence in Cyber

Generate Robust Cyber Intelligence (CYBINT)

Deliver Integrated D5 Information Operations Effects

Deliver Counter Electronics Effects

FLTC #7  On-Demand Force Projection, Anywhere

Timely Deployment of Flexible Ground, Information  & Space Capabilities for the Commander

Rapidly Constitute Multi-Mission, Affordable Satellites
 
Rapidly Deploy Multi-Mission, Affordable Space Payloads

Generate On-Demand, Reusable Affordable Space Access

Rapidly Checkout Spacecraft and Autonomous Operations

Globally Project Ground Forces and Material Anywhere in All Weather

Globally Move, Manage, And Process Information In Real-time

[Anti_Illuminati]

Improved Sensor Technology Could Someday Keep Tabs On Terrorists By Remote Control

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2009) — Scientists at Rochester Institute of Technology are designing a new kind of optical sensor to fly in unmanned air vehicles, or surveillance drones, tracking suspects on foot or traveling in vehicles identified as a threat.

"The Air Force has clearly recognized the change in the threat that we have," says John Kerekes, associate professor in RIT's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science. "I think we all understand that our military has a paradigm shift. We're no longer fighting tanks in the open desert; we're fighting terrorists in small groups, asymmetric threats."

Kerekes won a $1 million Discovery Challenge Thrust grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to design efficient sensors using multiple imaging techniques to track an individual or a vehicle.

The sensor will collect only the data it needs. It will assess a situation and choose the best sensing mode (black and white imaging, hyperspectral or polarization) for the purpose. Developing two strands of information—one about the target, the other about the background environment—will be key to maintaining a connection and for piercing through camouflage effects.

This is how it will work: The sensor will collect a black and white image of a target, say a car, and will record the shape of the object. A hyperspectral image will plot the object's color as it appears in multiple wavelengths, from the visible light to the near and short infrared parts of the spectrum beyond what the eye can see. (This mode can tell the difference between two blue cars passing.) The third imagery mode, polarization, cuts through glare and gives information about surface roughness. It provides details that distinguish between objects of similar color and shape. (This mode can lock onto the unique material properties of the blue car in question.)

"These are all complementary pieces of information and the idea is that if the object you are tracking goes into an area where you lose one piece of information, the other information might help," Kerekes says.

As the lead scientist on the project, Kerekes assembled a comprehensive team with RIT collaborators and other scientists to envision the system from end to end: all the way from the design of the optical and microelectronic devices to the synchronizing algorithms that tie everything together.

Zoran Ninkov, professor of imaging science at RIT, is working on the overall optical system. Ninkov is modifying one of his own astronomical optical sensors for this downward-looking purpose. Alan Raisanen, associate director of RIT's Semiconductor and Microsystems Fabrication Laboratory, is designing tunable microelectronics devices to collect specific wavelengths. Ohio-based Numerica Inc., a large subcontractor on the project, is creating the advanced algorithms necessary for tracking a target and picking the right imaging mode based on the scenario.

According to Kerekes, motivation for this project came from Paul McManamon, former chief scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Sensors Directorate in Dayton, Ohio, partly as a means of eliminating data overload.

"The idea is to lead to more efficient sensing both from the point of view of collecting the data necessary and being able to adapt to these different modalities based on the conditions in the scene or the task at hand," says Kerekes.

The catch phrase is 'performance-driven sensing,'" he continues. "The idea behind that is you let the task at hand and the desire to optimize the performance drive what information is collected."

Kerekes and his team are testing their preliminary models using generic scenarios played out in a simulated world akin to Second Life. The computer program, known as Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Image Generation model (http://dirsig.cis.rit.edu/), is driven by computer graphic codes that predict simulated sensor data and provide a platform for testing scenarios based on imaging problems, such as Kerekes' new sensor technology.

Adapted from materials provided by Rochester Institute of Technology.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090212150852.htm

[Anti_Illuminati]

Article from 1999:

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/12/32347

The Net-Savvy Navy
Craig Bicknell Email 12.01.99

A supersonic missile streaks low over the water, its flat gray body blending into waves and low clouds, slithering through the radar sweep of the aircraft carrier, undetected and deadly.

But there it is, on the screens of the carrier's combat information center: bright as a lighthouse, soon to be dead as a duck.

Its flitting radar trace has been picked up by other ships in the battle group, beamed wirelessly in realtime to the carrier and assembled by millions of lines of software code into a precise target.

Boom. Dead duck.

Chalk one up for "cooperative engagement capability," the Navy's newfound ability to share real-time sensor data between ships hundreds of miles apart. And just one small aspect of a technological revolution that's sweeping the seas.

Say hello to the way-new, network-centric Navy.

"This is a radical, dramatic transformation," said Richard Danzig, Secretary of the Navy, a former Harvard professor and Rhodes Scholar.

The Navy is following the business world into the information age. It's two years into a massive technology upgrade called Information Technology-21, designed to connect the Navy's far-flung dots into one cohesive information system. Completion is scheduled for 2003.

The implications are profound for every aspect of the Navy, from strategy to logistics to a military culture accustomed to top-down hierarchies, in which a few officers mete out information to the masses.

"It stands everything on its head," said Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, president of the Naval Warfare College and architect of the Navy's "network-centric warfare" strategy.

Shared information is the foundation of the strategy: Collect as much information from as many disparate sources as possible and share it with everyone -- at every level. In theory, that leads to a smart, flexible Navy that can adapt instantly to changing battle conditions.

Cebrowski uses unmilitary terms like "self-synchronization" and "self-organization" to describe the behavior of a networked Navy. The commander sets the parameters for his autonomous subordinates and monitors their actions. But he's freed from having to constantly pass down command decisions based on information only he has.

"It used to be that the senior people decided what it was that you needed to know. The information was metered to you," Cebrowski said. "But the modern warfighter has to be able to craft his own information domain. You have to give a person information systems commensurate with the power of the weapon in his hand."

The hope of the networked Navy is that its forces will make smart choices so quickly that they preempt enemy moves, rather than reacting to them.

"The old-fashioned notion is to generate a lot of smoking holes, kill a lot of people, break a lot of things," Cebrowski said. "The promise of network-centric warfare is that you can get an enemy to change his behavior without your firing a shot."

You can also improve the morale of sailors weaned in the social climate of the information age.

"One of the attractions of the information revolution is that it moves us away from a top heavy structure," secretary Danzig said. "Information acts like a force of gravity that pulls the decision-making power lower into the organization -- one that has more freedom, flexibility, and vibrancy. The gravitational pull is toward greater freedom and flexibility for junior personnel, and I think that's very healthy."

Theoretically, a networked Navy is also one that puts fewer sailors in harm's way.

Already, administrative jobs like personnel records and pay management are being moved off ships to shore stations. Instead of a bursar on every ship, there may be a handful in port that each handle pay for three or four ships. Automation, remote maintenance, and tele-medicine promise to further trim crew size.

Today, a navy destroyer has 300 crew members. The Navy's next-generation destroyer, designed to set sail in 2008, will be fully manned with a crew of 95. Some smaller vessels might ultimately go unmanned.

On a more prosaic level, the Navy hopes that the Web and intranets will transform its vastly complex logistics operations.

"We're an unusual enterprise in that every six months we send out 20,000 people who go halfway around the world," Danzig said. "We're deploying people in larger numbers to more disparate places than any other organization in the world. Technology affords us extraordinary logistics advantages."

A for-instance: The Navy is phasing out its old system of buying and warehousing food for the whole fleet. Instead, ships order from Web-based distribution centers and chow is delivered to the piers. The money saved has allowed ships to order better quality food. The same goes for replacement parts, ordered and tracked online.

The Navy has also recently launched a massive Web site called LIFElines to help sailors manage their Navy lives, from arranging base housing to financial services.

"It takes bureaucratic information out of the hands of bureaucrats," Danzig said.

It's the tip of the iceberg. The Navy is developing a massive Navy-Marine Corp Intranet designed to streamline all administrative and logistics functions. "We're talking on the order of 350,000 to 400,000 [networked computers]," Cebrowski said.

While there are obvious, concrete benefits to steering the Navy toward technological transformation, Danzig touts a side benefit that's harder to quantify but may be more critical: Change makes people think creatively.

"In the military, with such strong traditions and hierarchy" that's vitality important, he said. It keeps it from becoming an ossified anachronism.

"It's a force for psychological change."

[Anti_Illuminati]

This is what the New World Order thinks about/does while you're watching TV.

Maybe the title change will make a difference.

[kushfiend]

Net Centric Warfare - sick bastards.  Planning a war to be raged on the very citizens who gave them power in the first place!!!!!

The only way to stop this tactic is to rise up as one in unison, and if even if they pick off all our leaders [Alex Jones, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, etc.] it won't matter because the ideas of Liberty and equality are bigger than any 1 person.  However, it def won't help

Also, if it comes to that, I'm sure all of us will be rounded up like cattle as well.  We here at the forums are one of the front lines of information, at least I know I am, in my city.  News breaks here often DAYS EVEN WEEKS before the Main Stream will pick up on it.  If they shut this site down I will be truly sad and depressed at what humanity has become.

Bastards, damn dirty Babylonian bastards... God will judge them but I wish he'd hurry up because these sick f**ks are killing and raping children every day

[sociostudent]

Net Centric Warfare - sick bastards.  Planning a war to be raged on the very citizens who gave them power in the first place!!!!!

The only way to stop this tactic is to rise up as one in unison, and if even if they pick off all our leaders [Alex Jones, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, etc.] it won't matter because the ideas of Liberty and equality are bigger than any 1 person.  However, it def won't help

Also, if it comes to that, I'm sure all of us will be rounded up like cattle as well.  We here at the forums are one of the front lines of information, at least I know I am, in my city.  News breaks here often DAYS EVEN WEEKS before the Main Stream will pick up on it.  If they shut this site down I will be truly sad and depressed at what humanity has become.

Bastards, damn dirty Babylonian bastards... God will judge them but I wish he'd hurry up because these sick f**ks are killing and raping children every day

Well, we have to understand that ALL of us are an important part of the infowar, but on a deeper level, we also need to realize that WE ARE the leaders, WE ARE the revolutionaries, and WE all should support each other in the infowar, not JUST the "leaders" in the movement, but also each other in this. It's going to have to be a renaissance of consciousness that EVERYONE's involved in, and knowing that everyone has their own gift, their own way of sharing the info with people, and getting past the fear of "exposing yourself to the NWO" are a few of the first steps in turning the tide in this infowar or whatever you want to call it.

That way, when the time comes, it will be impossible for them to hold humanity down and keep us in that state of submission and fear because it won't be one or two people that they'll have to "deal with"--It will be millions upon millions upon millions and will be impossible for them to keep the lid on humanity's development and consciousness.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Imagine how difficult it might be for humans to write thousands upon thousands of pages of propaganda that fulfills EVERY one of the requirements set about in the quoted post! It makes you wonder how it is, that after any event, we see full saturation coverage of issues that are on 'echo repeat' across different media outlets.

I think there may be an AI computer system at work writing propaganda these days.. something as powerful as Ptech using an OODA loop decision engine which can, in just seconds, take input about the facts of an event (whether 'planned' or some unexpected event), and come up with the 'perfect' response for all media outlets to push onto the public.  In fact, this system would be able to generate regionally-specific propaganda; tailored to geographic areas, different cultural populations, different societal 'norms' ... and do it in less time than it would take any human to write one page for one area. 

Take this a step further, and consider how legislation is written.  The bills put forward in congress are written in the most obfuscating manner, taking thousands of pages of legaleze with cross references to other bills, and must adhere to the constitution (or have legal defense for not adhering to it), and can be edited, and revised dozens of times... how do these massive bills (e.g., cap and trade, health care, etc.) happen to be 'finished' at the 11th hour before a vote. 

I think the same engine writing propaganda can be used if you have a database of information for reference. This database would include the text of every single bill that has ever been written, plus the legal decisions of any court cases challenging those bills, plus the constitution, bill of rights, all the amendments, all the individual states' decisions regarding every issue in the bills ... all of this information in a massive database and requiring only a few 'descriptions' to generate a new bill.  Is it any wonder that congress doesn't read the bills? Could they be written in a more obfuscating manner than the way we see these critical pieces of legislation churned out these days?

We have discussed the 'real' authors of these bills as 'lobbyists', insurance companies, pharma companies, think tanks, etc., but we might consider that the same 'authors' are just fronts for an AI computer that we've come to know as Ptech, with an OODA loop decision engine that is a part of Total Battlespace Awareness - and it is this system that creates the legislation.  Guys, I think it fits, since for the powers that be, our congress is a 'battlespace'. Legislation has become a weapon against the people.

"Total Predictive Battlespace Awareness"
_______________________________________________________________________

http://www.realfighting.com/content.php?id=138#

Got a Second? -- Boyd's Cycle - OODA Cycle
By Ken Good

Preface - by Sid Heal, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department - Used by Permission

Because all tactical operations are dynamic, they are also time sensitive. Decisions and actions that are delayed are often rendered ineffective because of the constantly changing circumstances. When an adversary is involved, the operation is not only time sensitive, but also time competitive. Time or opportunity neglected by one adversary can be exploited by the other. Recognizing the importance of this characteristic, Napoleon said, "It may be that in the future I may lose a battle, but I shall never lose a minute."

A useful tool for understanding the importance of this concept is the OODA Loop. The OODA Loop, often called Boyd's Cycle, is a creation of Col. John Boyd, USAF (Ret.). Col. Boyd was a student of tactical operations and observed a similarity in many battles and campaigns. He noted that in many of the engagements, one side presented the other with a series of unexpected and threatening situations with which they had not been able to keep pace. The slower side was eventually defeated. What Col. Boyd observed was the fact that conflicts are time competitive.

According to Boyd's theory, conflict can be seen as a series of time-competitive, Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action (OODA) cycles. Each party to a conflict begins by observing themselves, the physical surroundings and the adversary. Next they orient themselves. Orientation refers to making a mental image or snapshot of the situation. Orientation is necessary because of the fluid, chaotic nature of conflicts makes it impossible to process information as fast as we can observe it. This requires a freeze-frame concept and provides a perspective or orientation. Once we have an orientation, we need to make a decision. The decision takes into account all the factors present at the time of the orientation. Last comes the implementation of the decision. This requires action. One tactical adage states that, "Decisions without actions are pointless". Actions without decisions are reckless." Then, because we hope that our actions will have changed the situation, the cycle begins anew. The cycle continues to repeat itself throughout a tactical operation.

The adversary who can consistently go through Boyd's Cycle faster than the other gains a tremendous advantage. By the time the slower adversary reacts, the faster one is doing something different and the action becomes ineffective. With each cycle, the slower party's action is ineffective by a larger and larger margin. The aggregate resolution of these episodes will eventually determine the outcome of the conflict. For example, as long as the actions of the authorities continue to prove successful, a suspect will remain in a reactive posture, while the commander maintains the freedom to act. No matter that the suspect desperately strives to accomplish, every action becomes less useful than the preceding one. As a result, the suspect falls farther and farther behind. This demonstrates that the initiative follows the faster adversary.

Today's environment of accelerating scientific discoveries and technological change bring ever-improving hardware to the end user. In this climate is it easy to overlook and even abandon the core foundation of any weapon system, the interplay and perceptions of the human mind in a combative situation.

A man who understood this better than most was Col. John Boyd, USAF (Ret.) Col. Boyd was tasked with determining why American pilots in apparently inferior aircraft were consistently outmatching their Korean counterparts. Air to air combat takes place in a 360-degree sphere and represents the pinnacle of the man and machine relationship coupled with the man on man dynamic warriors dream about.

Boyd was an extremely accomplished pilot who had a standing bet with all students under his tutelage. $40 - 40 seconds. The student would be allowed to start in a position of advantage and if Col. Boyd could not maneuver his same type aircraft into a position of advantage within 40 seconds, the student could collect $40. I don't think any ever collected.

Col. Boyd developed and pressed forward a simple, yet deeply profound model now known as the OODA cycle or as it often called, Boyd's Cycle. The cycle of Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act is the essence of combat and present in any human conflict.

Col. Boyd considered and defined the nature of combat in terms of time. All engagements were a competition for time, a precious commodity not voluntarily relinquished by either party. Col. Boyd understood the importance and advantages of relentlessly forcing the adversary to deal with a rapid serious of events in order to disorient and "get inside" the opponents OODA cycle.

Once "inside", time for the insider moves as it should, one event flowing to the next in a predictable pattern, the outcome virtually certain. On the other hand, the "victim" is stuck in time. He has no apparent opportunities to Observe and Orient meaningful events. Decisions and Actions are ineffective. He is pulled down and entangled in an unrecoverable death spiral. The laws of the universe somehow seem to have been unhinged. Time has somehow stood still as in a bad dream when one cannot run away from a terrible manifestation of the inner mind.

In the battle of "mind-space" the goal is simple; get inside and stay there.

Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. O.O.D.A.
The acronym is easy to remember The cycle itself is absolutely crucial to understand if one is regularly in harms way.

In order to consistently and effectively defeat opponents, you must sequentially move through the OODA cycle whether you are aware of it or not. It is model that can be used to dissect compressed timeframes in a logical and sequential manner. All engagements whether they are air-to-air dogfights or an up close and personal, hand-to-hand confrontation, conform to this simple, powerful, and insightful model.

I have noted that by studying and learning to apply this cycle, one has a effective way to segment, analyze, and improve human performance in confrontational situations. It is a gemstone to be admired and constantly examined.

Recalibrating the Internal Clock
The first issue is our perception of time itself.
I often illustrate people's perception of the time by walking to the back of the classroom and then back to the podium while elucidating some tactical point. While the class is still trying to digest the point, I then ask several students, how long did it take for me to walk to the back of the room and return to the podium? Typically I get a few turned faces, questioning looks and frowns. They are non-verbally asking me, what difference does it make how long that took?

The answers I do receive will typically range from 2 seconds to 10 seconds, a substantial variance. Some will argue that I did not give them any preparation to ready their internal stopwatch. But this misses the point. No one in a rapidly developing engagement is going to stop and remind you to calibrate your chronograph. The point is, using recall alone, the same event witnessed by trained observers is perceived to have taken place in different universes where physical reality moves at different speeds.

The other interesting thing to note is that I will never get an answer like 3.345 seconds.

Why is this so? True sometimes I get an answer of 3½ seconds, but that's as fine a gradient ever expressed. Our everyday existence does not require a division of time any closer than seconds for most events, in terms of verbal articulation. But in the world of close quarter engagements, using only full seconds to measure time is like using a sledgehammer to fine cut a diamond.

Tremendous and significant changes can happen in one second. A proficient adversary can fire three rounds out of a semi-auto shotgun while passing by an open doorway, horizontally and vertically changing position in relation to you in under a second.

To further illustrate the calibration point in the classroom, I ask someone to stand up and I give this volunteer a "red gun", an inoperative hard plastic replica handgun. I tell them to put it in their waistband, and I do the same. I tell them that they are now part of a futuristic new game show that pits one man against the other in a six-foot gunfight. The participants face each other, winner to receive one million dollars. Both are wearing metallic braces on their wrist and ankles and are held in place by a strong magnetic field. Both will actually be using real, perfectly functioning firearms. When the green light is observed, you will be free to access your firearm and dispatch your opponent as required.

Now I throw a twist into the scenario. I tell the student, that he was smarter and more cunning than I and he offered ½ his winnings to the operator of the magnetic field, if he would release his magnets 1 second earlier than mine. The operator says no, because one second was too obvious and the producers would have him executed for this breach of the rules. So the negotiations continue.

How about .9 seconds? How about .8 seconds? How about .4 seconds? How about .2 seconds? The operator finally agrees to release my opponent's magnets .125 seconds prior to mine. At this point in the discussion, I then ask the student, would you take this time advantage if given to you, even if you had to pay $100,000 for it? The answer is inevitably, in the affirmative! Any sane person would take any and all time given in a gunfight, no matter how small the increment.

We zoom back out. How important is time? How important is learning to perceive time? How important is it to re-calibrate our internal chronographs? How does one get better and more efficient at anything?

A familiar shooting drill that many trainers use to roughly gauge a shooter's proficiency is the "El Presidente".

The shooter starts out back facing to the target with a loaded and holstered handgun. At the sound of the buzzer the shooter spins to face 3 targets, 10 yards away, equally spaced 1 yard apart. The shooter is required to fire 2 rounds into each of the targets, reload and fire 6 more rounds, 2 in each target, attempting to hit the "A" zone of a standard IPSC target.

When you ask a new shooter to perform this drill you are not even looking for a time hack, but are more concerned about weapons handling and overall safety during the entire process. If the shooter safely completes the drill under 15 seconds, everybody is happy.

Give that same shooter some solid instruction and a few hundred rounds of practice and he or she should be hovering around 10 seconds consistently.

How does one go from 10 seconds to low 4-second runs? What should be examined is not how fast the shooter is shooting. But one should examine closely by what process did this shooter eliminate so much unnecessary motion and negative mental distractions in order to consistently repeat this performance?

For the remainder of this discussion, let's assume that we are talking about split seconds of time to move through the OODA cycle. Let's enter into the matrix.

Observe - The Starting Blocks - The First Quarter
This has to be your highest priority, find the threat before he or she finds you. An insight on the obvious you say! There is more than meets the proverbial eye!

Evaluating the modern battlefield, one should note that an enormous amount of effort and resources have been dedicated to "seeing" or observing the battlefield in real time. The investment in these resources has paid off handsomely during recent conflicts. The U.S. military exploits a tremendous satellite network, flies high altitude reconnaissance missions, deploys airborne and ground based radar systems, runs patrol operations, gathers real-time intelligence from a variety of sources, all in an effort to gain an overwhelming advantage as hostilities unfold. At this point in our military development, if we can see it, we can destroy it.

If you place yourself in the cockpit of a modern fighter jet, your prime directive is to find your opponent first and deploy your weaponry in a firing envelope advantageous to you before your opponent even knows your are there, just as it was when aerial combat first unfolded.

It is no different in a close quarter battle situation using handheld or shoulder-fired weapons. You must first find the threat through your main "radar system", your eyes, deploy your weaponry in a firing envelope advantageous to you before your opponent even knows your are there.

Zooming back in, let's examine some areas that can cause a degradation of our "on board radar system".

Placement of the Weapon. Under the duress of searching for armed threats, we have noted that even very experienced operators have a strong tendency to place the weapon in the visual cone before they have located the position of the threat. (More often than not their finger is on the trigger, a well-known unsafe practice) The weapon, arms, and hands are now blocking out vital visual information.

This would be exactly like a fighter pilot placing a 3" by 5" note card over part of their radar display and putting their finger on the missile release button, all the time believing they are somehow more ready to defeat their unseen opponent or opponents.

Body, Head, and Eye Movements. The body obviously carries the head, and the neck articulates the head, and eyes are directed from within the head. This body movement coupled with head articulation, eye direction, angle, and focal placement allows for an almost infinite number of possibilities for employment your main sensor system, your vision.

This freedom can lead to large "gaps" for potential threats to move through unopposed. You must understood this and deal with it through proper training. An easy way to visualize this is to imagine watching a home video a friend filmed. You sit down and have an expectation that you are going to receive good visual information. As the videotape is played you soon become agitated because the camera operator was inexperienced and out of control. The recorded images are jumping and jerking all over the television monitor. Important details of the dynamic situation are lost and undistinguishable. Lot's of good intent, energy, and activity, but unfortunately the most important aspects of the event go unseen.

This video camera example illustrates the body, head, and eyes moving without intelligence and efficiency. To make matters worse, the individual who was operating the camera was using the zoom feature in and out with completely random patterns. This illustrates an individual improperly setting the focal length of his or her eyes while searching for an unseen threat. I have noted that individuals and teams have a strong tendency to tune their "radars" to one distance and angle and leave it there. This is especially true when the first threat is located and identified. Tracking one target, and one target only could spell death to a fighter pilot over the battlefield.

Since our visual sensors do not obtain data like phased-array radars, we must constantly change the distance and elevation of our vision, in a systematic manner.

One must relegate this cycling of the vision to the sub-conscious mind through proper training and experience.

A famous German Fighter Ace was asked, what is your secret? Answer: "I have an acute awareness for the back of my neck".

He was also asked what he thought about the P-51 Mustang. He response: "Three of the four that I shot down today did not even know I was in the same sky with them"

Notice he did not talk about hardware here. He drilled down to the inner man.

As our eyes are set in the forward area of the skull, representing an approximate 210 degree field of view. This leaves us with an additional obstacle to overcome, a large area unseen directly behind us.

What is the optimal sequence for establishing the best direction, angle, focal length, body speed, and timings to use the vision properly in a tactical environment? This is the art and science of using your vision to properly observe. This is where the inner man reigns supreme over the external tools deployed in the environment.

This is an area of combat that begins to immediately separate a highly proficient shooting sportsman and a combatant on the modern, urban battlefield or street.

Orient - Establishing Reality - The Second Quarter

Once you have obtained good visual data, ideally before your opponent has, you must orient yourself to the overall situation. You must put things in proper perspective based on real time input, previous intelligence, and generated assumptions. You are not processing in a linear sequential manner; you are processing in parallel. If you had the opportunity to freeze frame these moments and ask yourself, what data are you considering at this moment, the list would grow quite long as the subconscious is probed with the conscious mind.

To help illustrate the concept, imagine a personal computer with an outdated central processing unit, a few megabytes of memory, not enough data storage, a black and white 10" monitor all controlled by an antiquated operating system. Now try and run a sophisticated software package that requires significant resources. You will be immediately frustrated with the result.

When I was in the military, I had the opportunity to free-fall parachute out of a perfectly good airplane. When I immediately recalled the first jump experience, it appeared to be a virtual slideshow. Only key images where etched into my mind. I remember checking my altimeter numerous times, verifying the location of my rip-cord (this dates me!), seeing the beauty of an inflated canopy and finding the "T" and then contact with the ground. The entire event was 5-7 minutes long. After 60-100 jumps the staccato slideshow morphed into a streaming digital video. Same timeframe, but now my brain did not have to spend precious resources finding a "spot" to burn the information in since it was no longer new information but familiar territory. I could now casually see everyone exit the aircraft, immediately place myself in proper perspective to all jumpers, the aircraft and the ground. I was spending plenty of time doing relative work with other jumpers, flying my canopy and landing extremely close to the desired target. I was now able to assimilate huge blocks of visual data effortlessly, as well as recall them with great accuracy and clarity. I was now "oriented" to this somewhat stressful event.

The brain has an amazing capacity for data storage, recall, and decision-making, provided it has some meaningful reference points. But when we are presented with a totally new set of circumstances, with no prior reference points, we become disoriented, I.E., when is the last time your brain had a threat with a loaded firearm swinging in your direction displayed on its internal movie screen?

Hence, the need for realistic training that creates these movies and turns them into valid reference points. High quality training paves a new and much needed information access road to a now cached experience. The experience will be real enough to prevent disorientation when actual combat is faced.

Consistent with the personal computer example, you are giving your brain upgrades specific to orientation. A larger cache of stored experiences on the hard-drive, a faster CPU, memory, and data transfer rate, greater display size, resolution and color. You now have a greater probability of arriving at a sound solution in a shorter period of time.

I have spoken with numerous law-enforcement officers and military personnel following firefights on the street and in combat who have participated in good force-on-force training prior to the real thing. They were not disoriented, quite the opposite. They could articulate the details of the engagement and followed a logical and effective sequence of events during the engagement.

Since all participants in the engagement must move through the OODA cycle to achieve consistent and repeatable results, you must strive to disorient your opponent. Note I did not say, out shoot, out run, out shout, the prime directive is to disorient your opponent. Once in this state, he or she should be overcome by events as you move smoothly on to the next phases and around the clock again and again. he opponent's perception of time becomes distorted, incoming data is dismissed, decisions are irrational, and actions become erratic and ineffective. This is an immensely powerful and often overlooked tactical tool.

You should have no sense of hurrying or waiting. You should be in harmony with what is actually happening.

Decide - The Pipeline - The Third Quarter

Practical decision-making can easily divided into two basic paths. The subconscious mind which can process hundreds of variables simultaneously, in parallel and the conscious mind which works in serial or sequentially, handling seven plus minus two variables before disregarding or misinterpreting incoming data.

Any process that must be accomplished in a compressed time frame should be relegated to the powerful subconscious mind, through training.

"If you consciously try to thwart opponents, you are already late" Miyamoto Musashi - 1645

Subconscious decisions are decisions arrived upon based on what we perceive, how we orient that perception and the time allowed to make the decision. If the threat is close and the time frame compressed we will automatically default to the sub-conscious pipeline. Whatever we brought to the situation, genetics, personality, training, assumptions, tools available, will pour out of us without conscious thought or effort.

I frequently use an example based on a real world incident in Southern California. A police officer has pulled over a motorist on the roadway to issue a traffic citation. Starting off, the officer does everything correctly. He finishes his initial assessment and begins to approach the vehicle to make contact with the driver.

As he makes visual and verbal contact, the driver reaches down between his legs to grab a handgun, with full intention to shoot the officer. The officer has just entered the OODA cycle in terms of this particular engagement. The suspect has already started cycling. As the officer reads the body language then moments later actually sees the handgun coming into view (Observation), he begins to orient to the situation. It is not something he regularly witnesses. During the orientation phase, he concludes that this is really a handgun, this threat is real and imminent and he must decide what to do. As the threat is relatively close and the time frame is compressed, the sub-conscious immediately dominates the decision phase and the officer is now on autopilot.

The officer is driven backwards by the pressure of the moment and rotates 90 degrees to his right and begins to accelerate and run to get back to his vehicle. The vehicle represents everything that is friendly and safe. It embodies familiarity, cover, concealment, communications, and additional weapons with which to neutralize the threat with.

Simultaneously, the suspect, attempting to engage the officer, immediately creates a decision-action by the officer to turn and leave the immediate vicinity, a subconscious decision he is now exploiting. The suspect continues to move through the OODA cycle again arriving at the top to observe. The suspect now exits the vehicle and observes a police officer with his back turned, essentially attempting to outrun super-sonic projectiles.

Let's get back to the police officer. Where is he in the OODA cycle? He is in the unseen third O as in "Oh Sh#@". He can no longer obtain any good visual information in relationship to the moving, now firing suspect. Only the grace of God can help him now. How did he find himself in this situation with little prospect of successfully overcoming the circumstances? A virtually instantaneous subconscious decision compelled him to arrive here.

Could it have been avoided? Most certainly it could have. How? Through well directed "Force-on-Force" training. Training that would allow an officer to observe this situation not for the first time while under extreme duress. These observation opportunities should be given progressively and repeatedly. This observation process starts creating a cache that ends up becoming a reference point from which to properly and efficiently orient. All the non-verbal cues, timings, the biomechanical possibilities and constraints of the combatants are now identified, sorted, stored and are ready for retrieval by the powerful subconscious mind. New courses of action will be discovered and can be experimented with.

The subconscious now has new experiences from which to draw upon. This creates an improved matrix of actions, increasing probability of success in the future.

Act - What we Dream About - The Final Quarter

We have finally arrived at the phase where most spend the majority of their time practicing and from my perspective the least significant in terms of what is really required. This is where you pull the trigger; push the button on your pepper spray, call for back-up forces, or any number of actions. Don't get me wrong! You must be able to act powerfully. You must develop a smooth, accurate lookdown, shoot-down capability with your shoulder-fired and hand-held weapons from a variety of positions and circumstances.

Let's put this in perspective. f you were given just enough instruction to successfully fly an F-15 Strike Eagle off the runway and around the sky, and you also received good instruction on how to release a missile, by simply pushing the red button on the joystick, would you consider yourself ready for aerial combat? Combat taking place in 360-degree battle space flooded multiple threats, while sorting critical information and dealing with the physiological and psychological factors associated flight in combat.

To increase your chances of survival in this complex environment, you might construct a mock joystick at home and practice pushing the button really fast, over and over!

Operators love to show others how well they see the relationship of two pieces of metal and pull a lever. They will run down range, carefully pull their target and hold it like a newborn. They will cherish it and show all interested and non-interested parties, including their neighbor's dog, their prowess at pulling a lever (pushing a red button). It's comical sometimes.

If you simply learn to properly release a tiny metal missile from your handheld or shoulder-fired missile launcher. You are no more ready for combat on the street or the battlefield than your newly found piloting skills.

It is all that leads up to the point of missile release that ultimately matters. Your observations, orientation, and decisions are what allows a relatively minor action on your part define the difference between success or failure, life or death.

Whether you are in an F-15 or controlling a firearm, once you push the button or pull the trigger you are not going to make any difference on where that missile is going to strike. It will conform to its "programming" and the immutable laws of physics.

If you talk to the Gracie Brothers, you would find out that their best selling Brazilian JuJitsu videotapes are the submission tapes, the last in their comprehensive series. This hunger to learn submissions (pulling the trigger) is enormous. Nobody is saying submissions are not part of the total package and skill set, but the Gracie's will tell you, "Position before Submission". Prior to submitting someone a sequence is in effect. You must maintain proper distance and balance relationship to your opponent, close the distance with your opponent at the proper time, take your opponent to the ground, establish a dominant position over them, then submit them (force them to give up, damage them to point where they can no longer fight back or choke them into unconsciousness).

If you watch the greatest submission fighter in the world, Rickson Gracie, you will notice that he does not vary his routine by much. Rickson more often than not ends up choking out his opponents using the same dominant position and the same finishing hold. Why is he undefeated after over 400 plus no holds barred fights? Why can't his opponents just counter the strategy employed time after time? I believe it is his total mastery of the time and space prior to the relatively simple position and finish. It is the game within the game. The OODA Cycle in action.

I have had the opportunity to work with quite a few shooters that have the action phase of their personal development honed razor sharp. Their ability to shoot a handgun, shotgun, and rifle at paper and steel is literally world class, far outpacing anyone on our training staff if the only measuring stick is speed and accuracy on non-threatening targets. This is certainly not a negative, but can lead to a false sense of security and accomplishment. When weapons are out and everybody is carrying lethal force at the push of a button, the proverbial wheels fall off the chariot until all phases of the OODA are understood, mastered and consistently applied.

A smooth running OODA cycle translates to good situational awareness. Situational awareness is the ability to collect, collate, and store data in a fluid, dynamic environment, accurately predicting future events based on that data.

Predicting future events in a tactical environment is a potent asset to have in your personal arsenal.

[Sweetnhigh]

Bloody Hell!

[chris jones]

THE SKULL AND BONES, THE NEW AND IMPROVED BANNER.

Grid bombing nations is not enough is it.
Genocide has taken a step forward.

[joeblack]

sounds like the moves in the matrix when they are fighting or bending to avoid bullets.

[Dig]

sounds like the moves in the matrix when they are fighting or bending to avoid bullets.

equilibrium

[Overcast]

Well, we have to understand that ALL of us are an important part of the infowar, but on a deeper level, we also need to realize that WE ARE the leaders, WE ARE the revolutionaries, and WE all should support each other in the infowar, not JUST the "leaders" in the movement, but also each other in this. It's going to have to be a renaissance of consciousness that EVERYONE's involved in, and knowing that everyone has their own gift, their own way of sharing the info with people, and getting past the fear of "exposing yourself to the NWO" are a few of the first steps in turning the tide in this infowar or whatever you want to call it.

That way, when the time comes, it will be impossible for them to hold humanity down and keep us in that state of submission and fear because it won't be one or two people that they'll have to "deal with"--It will be millions upon millions upon millions and will be impossible for them to keep the lid on humanity's development and consciousness.

Yeah, good point - I was just so.... pissed yesterday. Dunno why, but I had a horrible welling hatred in me for stupidity and the 'system' that seeks to enslave people.

I just can't live in chains - won't be worth it.

Sometimes I'd worry about getting 'tracked down' - but I can only take my own step and hope others follow. GOTTA stand up for the rights given to us in the Constitution and by God. Just HAVE to. If all true patriots take a STAND and refuse anything but the rights that have been given to us - UNITED WE WILL STAND. We can each only do our small part.


I am an AMERICAN that subscribes in whole to the concept put forth in the US Constitution - and I will die for that concept and my country. However; I will not go into chains of the usurpers or others who would have people believe that concept is failed - because it has been proven by time that these concepts are in fact solid truth.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

**************

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

**************

Regardless of what tyrants want to convince us: I will believe the above - TV Will not convince me otherwise, nor will rhetoric in the Media.

If these people love Chairman Mao so much - China may be willing to allow them immigration.

BUT - on this soil - there are many patriots that will DIE for the above words. And will protect this country from threats both Foreign and Domestic.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

[lavosslayer]

equilibrium

THIS ^

We're all "sense offenders"...

[DireWolf]

TV ? oh that box with moving pictures in it.

Don't watch it any more haven't for some time. All I think about is how to counter and annihilate the NWO.

[Overcast]

TV ? oh that box with moving pictures in it.

Don't watch it any more haven't for some time. All I think about is how to counter and annihilate the NWO.

Funny - remember years ago they said - "too much TV will rot your brain" - odd how very right they were/are.

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.cadmaps.com/XML-OODA.htm

SVG/XML for Enhanced OODA Decision Loops

Abstract:

The exponential rise of Internet usage graphically illustrates the advantage of information sharing across widely dispersed communities. Format barriers, whether digital or linguistic, have historically hampered information sharing. However, the advent of XML, Extensible Markup Language, introduces a methodology for breaking many of the digital format barriers and freeing information for timely access.
      The utility of visually referenced data systems for rapid assessment and response has been apparent since the advent of mapping. Modern GIS, Geographic Information Systems, have leveraged the spatial component inherent to almost all data resources to provide digital mapping interfaces to decision makers. Unfortunately, format barriers have hampered sharing geo-spatial interfaces across dispersed clients.
      Convergence of XML with geo-spatially referenced data resources opens new possibilities for widely dispersed communities of decision makers. SVG/XML is a recent W3C authored XML grammar for describing vector geometry interfaces for the Internet, ideally suited to dispersed GIS. Opening critical geo-spatial data to a wider community is essential to rapid assessment and response decision loops characterized by the classical OODA loop, Observe – Orient – Decide – Act. Using SVG/XML, Scalable Vector Graphic XML, to implement a web based OODA platform enhances rapid assessment and response systems in large organizations.

Introduction:

Recent world events continue to emphasize the need for critical information movement between organizational structures and between decision layers within organizations. Whether in logistical management, emergency response, or on modern battlefields, decision loops are being increasingly tightened to counter rapidly evolving threats. The classical OODA loop is inherent to all response systems. Hierarchical decision systems found in large organizations experience significant delays in decision loops due to the degree of separation between OODA loop nodes. For example, the time separation for an Action event’s result to appear in the Observation node will delay subsequent decision cycles.

Opening the OODA loop to a larger community can improve the delay impedance intrinsic to these larger hierarchical organizations. First, involving expanded communities of potential decision makers and action implementers can flatten decision pyramids. Secondly, implementing OODA platforms using XML creates opportunities for implicit feedback at all nodes of the loop.

“Interaction permits vitality and growth, while isolation leads to decay and disintegration.”  - USAF Colonel John Boyd author of OODA concept

SVG/XML is an XML grammar for describing two-dimensional graphics that includes a rich set of dynamic capabilities. SVG/ XML permits implementation of OODA platforms as Intranet/Internet applications across widely dispersed organizations. Since SVG/XML includes a complete set of event listeners, dynamic feedback across the entire decision loop is possible in a graphically rich interface. This offers many opportunities for tightening OODA loop cycles and improving assessment and response.

SVG/XML implementations of OODA platforms provide several important advantages:

·        Since XML is currently heavily used as a transport mechanism between systems, OODA platforms built on SVG/XML have access to a wide variety of heterogeneous data sources. These data sources can be scattered across the breadth of an organization.

 

·        XML as a development of the W3C, World Wide Web Consortium, is designed to be a foundation for the next generation Internet. OODA platforms based on SVG/XML are automatically accessible to large Intranet/Internet communities. These larger communities can flatten decision pyramids and dissolve decider actor distinctions. In Addition, the self-healing characteristics of DARPA’s original intent for the Internet are transmitted into the organization’s decision systems.

 

·        SVG/XML is a versatile graphics application language with dynamic event listeners that can be applied to any graphic object. The entire OODA loop can be connected with implicit feedback significantly shortening loop cycles. Dynamic connections across the entire OODA loop create a continuously updated OODA platform accessible to anyone in the decision chain.


Technical overview:

XML implementations of OODA loop platforms have only recently become possible. Although the foundation of XML has been in development over the past five years, important XML grammars have just now reached final recommendation stage. One important extension of XML is the W3C’s recent release of SVG, Scalable Vector Graphic mark up language. SVG opens a non-proprietary gate for vector graphic files essential to geo-spatial reference. For the first time vast amounts of engineering data in CAD and GIS formats can become part of the web. Unlike CAD and GIS data, SVG/XML is designed from the ground up to provide dynamic linking on any graphic object in an Intranet/Internet environment.

The Open GIS Consortium has also released an XML grammar called GML, Geographic Markup Language. GML is rapidly being adopted as a GIS transport mechanism across a wide range of proprietary GIS systems. This adoption of GML offers Internet based systems access to the vast infrastructure of legacy proprietary GIS formats.

Integrating geo-spatial data systems with GML transport structures and SVG/XML presentation graphics creates a framework for visually sharing heterogeneous data structures over the Internet. These XML grammars provide the tools for implementing OODA platforms across an entire organization complete with dynamic feedback through all phases of the OODA loop.

OODA Loops:



The term “OODA loop”, Observe-Orient-Decide-Act, was authored by a maverick military theorist named John Boyd in the 1980’s. The concept has also been adapted as a business model for explaining organizational decision systems. As a decision system model it focuses attention on optimizing decision loop cycles for any competitive situation. An advantage in the decision loop frequency translates into a competitive advantage over competing organizations. Though not widely adopted by the military, it was apparently used effectively in the most recent Gulf War.

SVG/ XML can be used to implement OODA platforms with implicit feedback across all phases of the decision loop. By Implementing OODA platforms using SVG/XML, the decision process is published to a wider audience inside the organization. This in turn takes advantage of the multiplier effect commonly observed with the advent of networked systems.

  “The value of a network increases by the square of the number of its interconnections” - Metcalfe’s Law

As more clients are involved in the OODA platform, the decision system becomes increasingly robust, because the pool of potential decision makers increases. As decisions are made and actions are implemented the results are dynamically fed back into the OODA platform, available for the next decision cycle. Coupled to persistent storage, these cycles are eventually available as an organizational memory. If the reach of the network is sufficient the action implementers are also a dynamic part of the loop. Vehicles, equipment, or individuals are tracked in the OODA platform and potentially real time location is available to decision makers. At some levels the decision makers and action implementers may even merge, extending decision loops out to the edges of an organization.

XML overview

XML can be thought of as a language for describing grammars, a meta-language. One of the originators of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee envisions a “semantic web” woven from a multitude of XML grammars, which can grow and embrace all communications, existing and as yet uninvented. It may seem bewildering to scan through current XML technologies such as XHTML, XSLT, XQuery, XPath, XForms, XLink, Xpointer, XSL, or XSchema. However, these are all tools for rationally extending the reach of Internet web infrastructure into new and as yet unexplored realms.

XML is self-describing, meaning that the structure can be inferred from the document.  This structure is based on a tree of hierarchical metadata tags. Since most real world systems are hierarchical, XML’s hierarchical tagging structure models these systems very naturally.

Heterogeneity is supported when each document instance acts as its own database. Instead of forcing information into a rigid top down model, information flows into the system allowing the model to evolve from the bottom up. Hundreds of different “schemas” or unique document structures can easily be supported in the same XML data store.

XML is also extensible. New tags, attributes, and data elements can be added to one or more document, hence the X or extensible in XML. This allows systems built around XML to support rapidly changing demands and requirements.

XML, as a meta-language, a language used to create other markup languages, also supports variable views through transformation technologies such as XSLT, XML Stylesheet Language Translation. Documents can be transformed between various XML schemas or into HTML, providing extremely flexible support for rapidly proliferating client hardware. XML documents transformed with XSLT or server side filters into a variety of presentation formats are accessible to a wide range of clients from workstations to PDA phones.

SVG overview

SVG is an XML grammar for describing two-dimensional graphics. It includes elements for vector shape features, raster images, animation, and text; all specified in a W3C authorized public Data Type Definition or DTD. This XML grammar or tag language can be processed with standard XML tools such as validating parsers, editors, and browsers. Released Sept of 2001 as a final W3C recommendation, SVG 1.0 is supported by several browsers but still requires a plugin for current versions of MS IE. SVG represents a fundamental extension of the Internet allowing vector design files full access to the Internet.

Graphics described as vectors have a distinct advantage over current Internet image technology. The raster PNG, JPEG, TIFF, NTIFS images are collections of pixels with no connecting intelligence. Even with advances in compression, raster requires relatively large files. These types of image formats must transmit all the space around a line as well as the line itself. Vector graphic formats, on the other hand, are simply collections of mathematical endpoints in Cartesian space. Since only the end points, along with some miscellaneous attributes, need to cross the Internet, downloads can be considerably shortened. While Internet bandwidth is at a premium this is still important, but even more important for bandwidth is the scalability inherent to vector lines. Once on the client browser, vectors are scalable without return trips to the server. Zooming in to look at vector detail does not degrade in the same way that raster images degrade. While raster images visibly pixellate almost immediately, the equation of a line is the same from point to point whether viewed from outer space or microscopically. SVG enabled browsers allow the user to interactively control his view with zoom and pan functions.

The connecting intelligence of vectors is important for another reason. Because graphic features are mathematically aggregated, entire features can be attributed. The hierarchical tag attributes of SVG/XML allow features to be grouped in arbitrary complexity with attribute inheritance down the tree. Since attributes can include dynamic linkage intricate parametric models can be created. In other words changes in one feature can trigger changes to additional linked features. Add a server to arbitrate these dynamic changes and the parametric links can extend around the world.

A standard XML DOM tree represents SVG internally. A DOM or Document Object Model is a hierarchical tree of objects in memory. This provides a high level of interactive functionality at the client level. Individual elements can be connected to additional SVG, XHTML documents, or even server side applications through event attributes or xlink:href anchors. In addition, JavaScript provides a full range of event listeners and endless customization possibilities tied to the DOM tree.

While primarily a vector grammar, SVG also provides hybrid raster capabilities for standard image formats such as PNG and JPG. SVG vector features can be overlaid on raster images making hybrid raster/vector displays possible. Raster, however, is not just a static bystander in the SVG specification. The SVG specification provides a full range of filter effects including custom convolution kernels. These filters can be applied to raster images and dynamically altered using SMIL animation timing events.

SVG is also compatible with the full range of XML specifications that are just now becoming available to the Internet. XPath, XPointer, XQuery, XForm, XHTML, XSLT, and GML are only some of the XML technologies, which provide basic infrastructure for a rapidly expanding semantic web. As part of this XML infrastructure, SVG stands firmly centered in the flow of current Internet technologies. SMIL, Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, is one of these XML standards, which allows SVG to coexist with media rich audiovisuals as well as animation. For example rollover mouse events on SVG diagrams can be used to trigger streaming audio or video.

OODA platform implementation using XML:

By taking advantage of current XML technologies, Geotechnologies, Inc has implemented a simple to use OODA platform and demonstrated a variety of feedback capabilities. The current implementation was built using widely available non-proprietary technologies wherever possible.

·        The hardware consists of a generic COTS Intel Pentium based server connected to the Internet as a co-location host with highspeed access to the Internet backbone. The use of non-proprietary technologies uncouples hardware from the system which means performance can easily be scaled in hardware.

·        The OODA platform has been implemented on both Windows 2000 and Linux OSs. Again the OS is not a factor in the implementation and alternative OSs may provide different scaling advantages.

·        In addition to the OS, the OODA platform makes use of the Apache httpd server, the Apache Tomcat servlet container, and the latest Java SDK 1.4. Internal server databases used the popular MySQL engine but any SQL RDBMS can be used.

·        On the client, Adobe’s SVG viewer plugin for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser was adopted as the most popular available browser. The Adobe SVG viewer is widely distributed as part of Acrobat Reader. As SVG matures additional viewers may become more popular and SVG viewing may eventually be absorbed into the browser. As an open w3c specification SVG is not dependent on a vendor specific browser or viewer.

·        The XML document store was kept as simple as possible and utilizes the native file system hierarchy of the OS. A wide variety of document store technologies can be incorporated. The OODA platform has also been demonstrated using a native XML database and a popular geo-spatial database. Since the OODA platform is based on Internet enabled technologies documents can be utilized from widely dispersed servers with URL access.

It is difficult to convey the dynamic nature of an SVG/XML implementation of an OODA platform. A series of static figures can provide snapshot views but the actual platform is dynamic at multiple levels. The client view is controlled by the user who can change location, zoom and pan to area of interests, turn on and off layers, request additional overlays from the server, and query data records from any place on the Intranet/Internet. At the same time the server platform is receiving updates from other users, which are then reflected in subsequent views. Whiteboard activated projects allow participating users to communicate by drawing onto each others views and moving user identified pointers to high light a feature.

Because elements in the local view can be tied to events on the OODA platform live changes can be reflected locally that indicate location changes of real objects or sensor monitors. One example of this is AVL services, Automatic Vehicle Location, utilizing GPS records brokered at the OODA platform server. Events are bi-directional which makes it possible to both monitor and control remote sensors using an SVG interface.

The following series of snapshot views attempt to capture the client view of an OODA platform.


Figure 1 – OODA platform opened in a client browser window

SVG/XML is well suited to the display of geo-spatial data and a hierarchical map paradigm is used for the display and interaction of information. Navigation is provided by clicking into a map area of interest or by selecting a previous project. Projects may be public or private, read-only or read-write, or even whiteboard active. Both the control tab menu and the map view frame are created with SVG/XML and are therefore capable of dynamic event interactions from the client. In addition the SVG/XML is data driven at the server side, which means that changes at the server are reflected in the local view simultaneously across all clients anywhere in the world. Tab menus are connected to the server application and reflect resources as they are dynamically altered at the server.


Figure 2 – OODA platform with additional data resources selected by the user

Additional information can be added to a selected area from server databases of geo-referenced data. Available overlays in SVG/XML format can also be merged. Map layer visibility is user controlled. Turning off layers exposes additional event functions in underlying layers. Users are in control of the amount of information in the view.

All features in the view are capable of being labeled. To avoid view clutter, labels are only displayed as the user mouse rolls over a feature illustrating the dynamic capability that SVG/XML event listeners provide.

Data resources are made available to the OODA platform by uploading to the data store on the server. Additional servers can be accessed using server tools such as J2EE Java servlets. Resources can be vector maps, imagery, or databases with geo-referenced records.


Figure 3 – OODA platform zoomed to an area of interest with additional graphics

Because the client view is made up of vectors enhanced with raster imagery, zoom and pan capability is available in the local view. Additional graphic elements can be added to the view and edited as desired. Once submitted these additional features are available to other users of the platform.


Figure 4 – OODA platform with high resolution box

Hybrid vector raster capability is part of the SVG/XML specification. By coupling the view to server side functions arbitrary size imagery can be utilized in the local view. Low resolution imagery for orientation is displayed by default, but enhanced full resolution imagery for an area of interest can be requested from the server. Complex image analysis functions are handled by the server, while SVG/XML provides an interactive interface for defining the location and area of interest.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Figure 5 – OODA platform with merged high resolution imagery and vector details


Figure 6 – image analysis is available in the client view

In addition to graphic and raster elements the SVG/XML specification provides a set of filter effects that can be applied at the client. Figure 6 shows an inversion filter chained with a custom convolution kernel for edge enhancement. The SVG slider tool on the left is linked to the contrast filter of the high resolution area of interest in the imagery view on the right.


Figure 7 – OODA graphic elements are connected to arbitrary data records

Figure 7 illustrates the ability to graphically select elements and open a traditional database record from the server. The database may be at the OODA platform server or anywhere in the Intranet as long as URL access is provided. The data in the record can be revised and updated by clients or read-only. Once a change has been made it is reflected in subsequent views.

The ability to connect graphic elements with database records provides a useful visual window to datasets with geo-reference fields. This linkage can also go two ways. Scaler fields within data records can be displayed in thematic mapping to aid in analysis.  Thematic mapping is a common practice for rapidly discovering proximity relations of selected attributes.


Figure 8 – OODA Platform thematic view


Figure 9 –OODA platform for WO entry and monitoring

The flexibility of SVG/XML provides a wide range of interface options. In Figure 9, work order status is monitored from a server database. Assignments are made by dragging vehicle symbols over the desired WO location. This is an example of a simple feedback loop at the decision phase. Once a decision is made it is available to action implementers. As a vehicle then responds, its location is tracked at the server and updated in the observation view.


Figure 10 –OODA platform for sensor monitoring

Remote sensor monitoring and control is an example of closely integrated OODA loops.


An OODA platform is a tool for communicating the various phases of decision processes across a large organization. Using SVG/XML event linkage, the degree of separation between each phase can be reduced and decision cycles tightened. SVG/XML technology offers an important enhancement opportunity for the implementation of OODA platforms in Internet/Intranet environments.

[EvadingGrid]

Whats this stuff about XML mean ?

A few years back none of this would have been possible, because the different computer system talked in different languages. So they could not exchange information without great difficulty.

The XML provides a really simple and elegant method of exchanging information between systems that speak different languages. To put it in laymans terms a "Mac can exchange data with a PC".

The key point is that the XML enables different 'alien' computers to be seamless connected into one giant control grid system.

There are lots of other things that they probably are using the XML for, such as additional encryption, and remote procedure calls RPC. All of which simply make the intergrated command and control grid not only technically possible, but relatively easy to design and implement.

[lordssyndicate]

Nice post really does a good job of tying in  everything into one solid post...

[trailhound]

"If you consciously try to thwart opponents, you are already late" Miyamoto Musashi - 1645

[agentbluescreen]

"If you consciously try to thwart opponents, you are already late" Miyamoto Musashi - 1645

]   It should be noted here that under some circumstances such as in a confrontation with a nuclear armed opponent, it may be necessary to operate in this zone of order so as to avoid the risk of an irrational act or ^reactions and uncontrolled escalation.

Translation of redacted note:

"let's try to keep the killing at manageable levels, without giving away our real plan"

... "may be" not, eh?

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.afcea.org.ar/publicaciones/book.htm
Information Warfare Pioneers Take Top Pentagon Positions

Elizabeth G. Book


Military planners and policymakers, for many years, have advocated the need to increase the interoperability of computer networks for battlefield use. Although some progress has been achieved, the reality today is that network-centric warfare is more of an academic concept than an operational reality.

Things could change in the future, however, as the pioneers of network-centric warfare settle into high-level Pentagon posts. These officials will be expected to help bring network-centric warfare to the mainstream of military doctrine and program development.

In 1999, David Alberts, John J. Garstka and Frederick P. Stein published a book titled, "Network-centric Warfare, Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority." A contributor to the book was then-Navy Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski.

Now, Cebrowski, Garstka and Alberts are all working at the Pentagon in positions that allow them to influence the application of network-centric warfare. Cebrowski, recently retired from the Navy, is the Pentagon’s director of force transformation. Garstka is the chief technology officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Alberts is the director of research and strategic planning for the assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I). The assistant secretary for C3I is the Pentagon’s chief information officer.

Network-centric warfare can be defined as the use of computers, high-speed data links and networking software in combat operations, said Ronald O’Rourke, a national defense specialist at the Congressional Research Service. The application of network-centric warfare means that data gleaned from listening devices, unmanned vehicles, geo-spatial information and human intelligence is collected and distributed in real time to the military services.

"Network-centric warfare is no longer just someone’s idea, but it’s being put into practical use and is accruing benefits," said Alberts in a recent interview. "We’re developing a state of shared awareness, so that everyone understands what it is, and program managers develop capabilities with an eye toward interoperability, even when that specifically may not be mentioned in program requirement documents.

"We know we have to deploy a robust infrastructure for sharing information," Alberts said. "Not only do we need all the information collected by the Defense Department available in the same place, we need information collected by other people, outside the Defense Department."

Current legacy systems are not interoperable without work-arounds and special fixes, which may create security problems, Alberts said. "Most people know that security is also a huge issue in this day and age," he said. "Doing something both interoperable and secure is a real challenge.

"We have people now monitoring networks and looking at systems, and we’re making big strides, but in the final analysis, it takes a lot of people at the Defense Department to get something done," he said. Experimentation will be key to the implementation of network-centric warfare, said Alberts. "Experimentation is a great start, and we need to be doing a hell of a lot more of it," he said.

Alberts mentioned that Garstka often gives speeches, talks and attends conferences outside of the Defense Department, in order to exchange ideas about network-centric warfare. "We used to think that industry and academia were way ahead of us on this concept, but it turns out now that we do a lot of stuff here just as well," he said.

Cebrowski fine-tuned the concept of network-centric warfare while he was president of the Naval War College. As the force transformation "point man," answering directly to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, he is tasked with making sure that the military services are working in line with the Department’s vision. It is expected that his first priority will be to make all the services "network-centric."

"If you’re not interoperable, if you’re not on the ‘net,’ you’re not benefiting from the Information Age, and you’re not on the team," said Cebrowski during a roundtable with reporters. "People do not strive to be non-interoperable, but there are forces that tend to lead people to program decisions, which might result in a lack of interoperability, and those need to be addressed," he said.

"Rumsfeld wants transformation linked to key strategic functions, and network-centric warfare should be the cornerstone of the Defense Department’s plan for transformation," Cebrowski said. The four strategic functions are "assurance of allies, dissuading of competition, deterrence of hostilities, and if need be, the decisive defeat of enemies." Transformation plays a role in all of those functions, Cebrowski said.

The concept of network-centric warfare provides a "solid intellectual foundation from which to build," said Army Lt. Col. Kevin Woods, director of experimentation at the U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM). "It has already spawned new supporting joint concepts," he said. "It is important to remember, however, that some of the ideas associated with network-centric warfare still remains well-founded hypothesis and conjecture." To move beyond conjecture, Woods said, joint experimentation is required.

"Network-centric warfare must include all service capabilities," said Woods. "Its strength is in the idea that when diverse war-fighting elements possess a shared understanding of the battle space, and their capabilities are in mutual support, then new synergies will emerge that today remain essentially undiscovered.

"The joint force—as an organized whole—is the beneficiary of network-centric warfare," he said. "The alternative to joint warfare is probably sub-effective warfare: greater risk, more casualties, greater costs and indecisive outcomes."

John Stenbit, assistant secretary of defense for C3I, said that network-centric warfare "allows us to go anywhere we want, in very small groups, talk to each other, and get everything together at exactly the same instant and turn it all around."

"The traditional systems rely on the fact that the bureaucracy that finds the target is the same bureaucracy that shoots it," Stenbit said during a Pentagon news conference. "But, if we achieve a network-centric operation—and to me that means anybody can get any information at any time—anybody in the world who’s got a gun at any moment can be solving the problem of what are his ten best targets, and it’s not somebody waiting for somebody else to tell him.

"That doesn’t mean he’s supposed to shoot. But I do believe that it’s very important that we decentralize the decision-making."

Arthur L. Money, who served as assistant secretary of defense for C3I in the Clinton administration, said that information superiority encompasses the ability to collect, process, protect and distribute relevant and accurate information in a timely manner. It is equally important to deny adversaries access to that information, he told an industry conference.

Woods agreed that the enemy’s information systems play a key role in war planning. At JFCOM, "the concept of an operational net assessment is to understand the enemy as a system-of-systems. As an initial model, these systems are often listed as political, military, economic, social, information and infrastructure.

"The challenge for the commander is to discern those nodes within the enemy’s systems that are both essential to the enemy and vulnerable to attack. Paralyzing effects that deny all options to the enemy comes from a full court, sustained attack against all of the enemy’s systems," Woods said. "Information is important, but it is still only one system."

According to Money, "Network-centric warfare is going to tie together every aspect of our operations, from tactical to theatre to national commanders, from our ‘satellite’ sensors to our ‘shooters’ on the ground, all in what we call ‘a system of systems.’

"Technology intersects at almost every level of defense, and the advances made in high-performance computing and complex data management solutions have never been more relevant in digital warfare than they are today," Money said.

Knowledge Needs

"The Department of Defense and the intelligence community must invest in new technology capabilities and people to meet the information and knowledge needs of the armed forces and national decision makers," said retired Army Lt. Gen. James King, former director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

"What we need is a fused, real-time, true representation of the battle space—an ability to order, respond and coordinate horizontally and vertically to the degree necessary to prosecute the assigned mission," he said during a conference sponsored by Silicon Graphics Inc.

John Burwell, senior director of government industry for SGI Federal, explained that the sensors that are out there—imaging, listening devices—generate immense amounts of data that needs to be stored, processed and turned into meaningful information to support decision making.

As an example of how network-centric warfare works, Burwell cited the Defense Department’s Topscene system. Topscene is a software application that provides a mission rehearsal digital environment for military pilots. The idea is to provide an interactive, three-dimensional training environment that is geo-specific, meaning it reflects the real world. The scenery that pilots see in the rehearsal looks exactly like the real mission, because it’s based on real world imagery.

"The same technology of three-dimensional visualization can also support command and control applications," said Burwell. "That sort of data fusion has never been done before. By putting different pieces of data together from different systems, you get much more powerful results."

The U.S. government, he added, has done "a lot of collection and processing of data, but now we’re doing more visualization of data, and that’s exciting."

Woods noted, "The powerful idea here is to establish those conditions that can evolve the service strengths into a single, highly functional single system."

The question of how to shift the focus away from systems and onto joint mission capabilities packages is critical, Cebrowski said.

JFCOM says that’s where they come in. At the Joint Forces Command, "We are looking to use all that we have in a collective fashion, a goal that is unique in the Defense Department. … We are changing how the U.S. goes to war," said Air Force Lt. Col. Janet Tucker, a spokesperson for JFCOM.

"We are trying to realize the vision of a ‘plug and play’ force, where ad hoc computer networks could be established over a battle space, anywhere, anytime," said Annette Ratzenberger, chief of JFCOM’s experimentation engineering. Within such a computer network, Ratzenberger said, the goal would be for any soldier, sailor, airman or Marine to plug-and-play with other agencies and command authorities.

"Someday we want to have the pilot in the aircraft being able to talk to a nuclear expert on plant design, and be able to do that in real time," she said.

JFCOM is pursuing modeling, simulation and experimentation in this arena. "We try and work this networked-battlefield, through scheduled experiments such as Network Challenger II and Millennium Challenge ‘02, which will occur in July of 2002, with all services involved."

During the experimentation process, Ratzenberger said, "we are looking at three legs of a stool that make up the operational concept: the services’ doctrine, organization, and technology.

"There is some prototype software that we will be experimenting on," to connect the networks, Ratzenberger noted. "Most importantly, however, are the doctrinal and organizational aspects." These experiments, she said, "are beginning to look at what we would call ‘coherent jointness’ in the battle space, as opposed to separate service stovepipes. We’re trying to take stovepipes and make them interoperate together."

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/transformation/t11272001_t1127ceb.htm

Presenter: Arthur K. Cebrowski, Director, Force Transformation       Tuesday, November 27, 2001 - 2:30 p.m. EST

Special Briefing on Force Transformation

(Special briefing on force transformation. Also participating was Victoria Clarke, ASD PA)

Clarke: Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to get started, here.

As you know, the Quadrennial Defense Review directs the establishment of the Office of Force Transformation, and today we are going to get a briefing from the new director of that office, retired Navy Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski. Many of you know him; he knows many of you. He brings a distinguished record of broad military experience and strong credentials in joint operations and information technology. Many of you may also know him from his years as the innovative president of the Naval War College.

He will report directly to the secretary and to the deputy secretary of Defense, and the secretary wanted me to point out, as some of you know if you were with us yesterday, we would not let the secretary go on at great length as he wanted to about the importance of transformation, the kinds of things we've seen thus far. He talked to me about this this morning; he wishes he were here. And he will come back and talk more about it with you and with the admiral.

But without any further ado, I will turn this over to you, sir, and you've got a few brief remarks to start off.

Cebrowski: Thank you very much, Torie.

This is indeed a great and important day for me: it's my 36th wedding anniversary, and that's the most important thing on my agenda today. You're second. (Laughter.)

But it's, of course, good to be here with you. My plan is to talk just a little bit about the office, how I view force transformation. We'll look at it through several lenses. But most of all what I'd like to do is stop talking and take your questions and then see if we can develop a little bit of a dialogue on issues that you think are most important with regard to transformation.

What I'd like to do is look at the subject of transformation through the lens of strategy, through the lens of corporate strategy, risk management and organizational principles. But first, a few -- let me talk a little bit about some of the things that the secretary asked me to do.

First and foremost, the president and the secretary elevated transformation quite rightly to the level of strategy. And that is probably the most important lens through which to look at transformation. Strategy is about how one selects a competitive space and determines the competitive attributes within that space which will lead to advantage. Strategy answers the fundamental questions of how one controls the scope, pace and intensity of a competition.

And so you can see and hear some of the key questions which must be answered with regard to force transformation.

The secretary wanted transformation linked to key strategic functions, and he has mentioned four of those: the assurance of allies, the dissuading of competition, the deterrence of hostilities and, if need be, the decisive defeat of enemies. Clearly transformation plays a role on all four of those, but the one which seems to get the most attention, and it certainly attracts my attention, is the dissuading of competitive entry.

The secretary was also keen to point out that transformation is not about the future. It is about the present as much as it is about the future. If something is indeed a good way to think in 2015, well then why shouldn't we be thinking that way today? Or what elements of it couldn't we draw into the present age? And if you were to look at history in conflict, for example, as well as the current conflict, I think you can see examples of transformation in process in the present day. And this is a very useful way to think about transformation, as not something to be relegated to the future. It's safe to live in the future, and I suppose I could always retreat to the future, but I refuse to do that, and I wouldn't be doing my job if I did.

The secretary, of course, also wants us to identify and leverage our enduring advantages. He's interested in long-term competition and maintaining an advantage in that. He wants fresh approaches to risk management and it's appropriate that he turn to transformation as a potential vehicle -- as a vehicle for that. And he also asked me to deal quite up front with the cultural impediments to transformation. Much has been written about this. You're all familiar with that literature, and it's something that a person who's dealing with transformation has to confront head on.

John Cotter has said that the last thing to change in an organization is its culture, and consequently the work on cultural change must begin first. There are some tools for that. Of course, there's the schoolhouse, it tends to take a very long time.

But we have some other examples which go very much faster -- for example, operational prototyping.

When one introduces an operational prototype, when you put something in the hands of people they have no trouble visualizing what's happening. They can then extrapolate from that to change. And that can indeed be very, very powerful. And there are several examples of doing that. We have one of those going on right now with the lease of a high-speed transport ship for experimentation with the Army, the Navy, the Coast Guard and the Special Operations Forces. You also have the Marine Corps experimenting with one out in the Pacific. And already, although these ships have been in the hands of the operators for only a matter of weeks, already you can tell that minds are racing and ideas are coming forward. And so, therefore, I will undertake to catalyze operational prototyping as a vehicle.

I get some support, of course, by virtue of language in the QDR, for people who weren't privy to earlier conversations with the secretary. And the secretary asked that I, of course, support the transformation effort, foster innovation and experimentation, evaluate transformation efforts, promote synergy and provide him with policy recommendations. And so of course I will do that. But again, first and foremost, the thing to remember is that we're talking about strategy.

A few months ago, in his report to the Congress, the secretary said that network-centric warfare should be the cornerstone of DoD's strategic plan for the transformation of the forces. But network-centric warfare is more than a cornerstone, and transformation is more than network-centric warfare. So we are indeed working at a -- starting our work, at least, at a very high level in strategy, since the understanding of network-centric warfare and operations is that it flows from the fundamental changes or shifts in the processes within society itself. And so this is an example we've seen of the transformation which we are all living, this transformation in society, and so it's quite natural to expect such a thing in the military itself.

I've been asked, what is transformation? Again, I'm helped in the QDR, they gave a definition: the evolution and deployment of combat capabilities that provide revolutionary or asymmetric advantages to our forces -- a good definition. One of the important things about this definition is that it's followed by another definition, the definition of modernization, which means, then, that it contrasts transformation with modernization and therefore says what transformation is not.

I've expanded somewhat on the QDR definition for my own working definition, and that is that transformation are those continuing processes and activities which create new sources of power and yield profound increases in military competitive advantage as a result of new, or the discovery of, fundamental shifts in the underlying rule sets. So we're trying to get to some of the shifts in the basics which underlie the formation and application of military power. And then that, of course, should be reflected in the metrics, or how one answers the fundamental question of, how do you know you're doing transformation, vice something else?

The need for transformation, I think, has been well established as compelling, and certainly after 9/11 it should be self-evident. But why this sense of urgency? In his long article with on the subject in the Washington Post, the secretary talked about the relationship between transformation and the current war effort. And indeed we should realize that this is simultaneously the next war and the next inter-war period.

It takes time to decide how to do things, and that should give us a little sense of urgency in that one can't push these things off for very long, because it takes time to decide what it is one wants to do. Once a decision has been made, the department is capable of moving very, very quickly, and there are several cases in history when very significant capabilities were brought on line in a short period of time. One that springs to mind at first is the November 1956 decision to put nuclear missiles to sea on submarines, and it was in November, exactly four years later, in 1960 that George Washington went out on its first patrol with nuclear weapons.

And so it's only a period of four years for profound change. But it frequently takes much longer to decide, and this means that work has to be done in supporting decisions and indeed helping to craft the tools which will support decision-making, and these of course include such things as war-gaming, experimentation, and again, prototyping.

And I suppose another reason why one should focus on this very much now is because, even though the Defense budget has had something of an increase, costs continue to grow. They're quite -- indeed, the problems remain daunting. So we need to view transformation more as a resource than as a cost, and indeed it is. Recall, of course, that the future is funded by the past, and we should expect to apply that as we go forward.

Just a couple words on corporate strategy and risk. Of course there are present day needs which must be met, systems which must be maintained, salaries which must be paid, infrastructure which must be repaired and the like. And one should not be surprised if the Department continues to spend a considerable portion of its assets to do those many things. However, a sound corporate strategy has two other elements. One of those is to push out the boundaries of current competencies, exploring the boundaries of those competencies to perhaps create new competitive advantage in a competitive space in which there is already some expertise.

The second one is where we talk about potentially creating a whole new competitive space, and these can indeed be quite grand -- activities which can change the Department and perhaps change the world, and we've done that before. For example, the decision to communicate in a sense from space changed the Department, changed the world. The decision to pursue navigation from space changed the Department, changed the world.

The catchy statement, "Own the night" changed the Department; changed the world. Certainly nuclear ballistic missiles in submarines changed the Department; changed the world.

So we have in our history demonstrated the ability to do this. The trouble with many of these things is we see them retrospectively, and part of the great challenge is to adopt a more forward-looking view and to create the kind of environment which will encourage and, indeed, catalyze the kinds of activities which can produce those kinds of changes. And so, of course, we're keenly interested in that.

One of the reasons why we're so keenly interested in that is that it relates to elements of risk management. Until this last spring, we were asking the question -- How much is enough? -- and that was a measure of risk. But now we see that the more appropriate questions have to do with breadth rather than depth, because, you see, as you spend a great deal of time focusing more narrowly on what you think is a projected conflict, and you develop depth against that, you create large spaces or gaps into which an enemy can maneuver strategically. In other words, the more you optimized and the better you got at the preferred mode of conflict and the preferred mode of scenario, the higher your risk actually became because you created more opportunities for an enemy. Okay? Therefore, one of our products must be the broadening of our capabilities -- our capabilities base, our technology base, and our industrial base. And so that is the way to view risk management.

Lastly, let's take a look at the issue of metrics. These are some of the questions that -- you know, that I'll be asking: What new competitive space is being created by this activity? How is competitive entry being limited? For example, we can see that barriers to entry in some key areas are falling; for example, in cyberspace, in space, at sea. And so the question becomes one of, well, how are we responding to that?

How do we reestablish or compensate for those falling competitive -- those barriers to competitive entry? What new rules are being created or used? What new relationship emerges? For example, we see -- in discussions of network-centric warfare we talk about the shift of sources of power to information-based activities. So we should expect to see, for example, a shift from some of the more industrial-age sources of power over to, perhaps, sensors, and then a concept should emerge with regard to sensors.

How is the capabilities base being broadened -- as I just mentioned before. What new warfare elite will emerge? What's the underlying new concept? For example, for demassification of the Navy -- or not the Navy, but the whole military. Pardon my slip. I've been talking about the Navy for 37 years; it should come as no surprise.

How might we develop a new concept to deal with weapons of mass destruction? How do we shift the focus away from systems and onto joint mission capabilities packages? Is there a concept or a methodology for that? And we should see some evidence. We should see new training programs. We should see a new elite emerging. We should see the expression of transformation in war plans. We should see people talking more about operational prototyping, about new forms of experimentation -- not experimentation downstream of a decision already made, but experimentation upstream, to inform a decision. We should see the emergence of new organizational structures and new doctrine. We should, perhaps, see new methodologies for readiness reporting.

And then, finally, we should see efforts to manage the dislocations and devolutions which are inherent in transformation because as something new appears, something old is devalued. And that brings me back to the beginning, which is cultural impediments to change. And that's normally what causes those impediments.

Well, with that, why don't I stop, and I'll take your questions.

Q: Admiral, to what extent do you think, personally, 7/11 -- or 9/11, and the war on terrorism has changed the military's mind a bit toward massification, toward battle, toward the Cold War approach to things? And will this make it easier to iron out, eviscerate the cultural impediments to change?

Cebrowski: I think it's done several things for us. First of all, it's given us an enhanced sense of urgency. Second of all, it's given us an existence proof that we must broaden our capabilities base to limit the way a potential enemy can maneuver into a space that we create not by neglect, but rather, by our allocation decisions. And then, lastly, it also gives us an existence proof of the kind of agility which is required.

I don't think that very many people would have predicted exactly that these kinds of forces would come together in this way for that kind of battle. And probably there are several people who before the fact would have said, "Well, we'll never do that. We don't have a doctrine for it. We haven't trained for it. You know, there have been no -- there are no war plans exactly for that."

But that is the reality, and that is war the way war actually does develop, without a precise fit to the existing doctrine, to the war plans, to preconceived notions. It calls forth a certain amount of mental agility.

And so all of those things combine, I think, to add impetus to the secretary's program for transformation.

Q: And do you think the military leaders believe this? Do you think it's made a change in the mind-set?

Cebrowski: Well, I just talked with one of the service chiefs this morning, and he was quite enthusiastic about transformation and went on at some length about his ideas for transformation. So I don't -- I don't see we have a problem.

Q: Sir, can you tell us a little bit about how you feel on spiral development? Is that an acquisition strategy that you're going to be pushing for in all the military services?

Cebrowski: I'd like to expand the notion a little bit of spiral development or spiral acquisition to something that I call continuous adaptive acquisition. And an element of that is operational prototyping. And I could go on at some length on this particular subject, and you may have heard me do this before, which might have prompted the question -- (chuckles) -- but there are indeed some opportunities here.

When one pursues a robust operational prototyping program, one should expect a ripple-down effect in the -- there to be a ripple effect through acquisition more broadly. What you want to do is put a capability in the hands of people as soon as you possibly can, and then have the ability to issue the next item, then the next item, constantly growing and changing.

And so the capability emerges and the systems portions of that evolve together with the doctrine and the organizational constructs and the fit into war plans, the fit into larger mission capabilities packages, which is, I believe, a much superior way to do things than to forecast a need 15 to 25 years hence, freeze a design, and then make it fit into the reality that emerges. This is a different approach. I believe there's room for both of those things, but I'd like the continuous adaptive one for my purposes, in that it seems much more suitable to the emergent nature of transformation.

Yes, ma'am?

Q: Can you discuss a little bit about the structure of your office? I've heard that there are about a half a dozen special assistants. What would they all be looking into? And is there anybody in your office that will be working with allies or other militaries as they transform?

Cebrowski: Let me take the last one first. Even though the United States generates, you know, probably about 25 percent to 27 percent of the world's wealth, depending on how you measure it, and we have a marvelous education system and, you know, truly marvelous industry, it would be arrogant to assume that all of the good ideas will come, you know, from within our own borders. And we therefore have to be very open to alternative approaches and -- so that we can take them in, as well. That kind of diversity enriches us. It broadens our capabilities base and makes it easier for us to develop relationships with allies and potential coalition partners. And so we should be doing that kind of thing, and so I won't be neglecting what goes on overseas at all.

Next, with regard to the office itself. We'll work in five broad areas. First, linkage to key elements of strategy, so we will have a strategic focus and included in that will be the exploration of the future of war and alternative underlying rule sets which govern the processes of war.

Second is concept formulation -- is absolutely key. The systems decisions fall out the bottom. One should do work in strategy threats and technology first, and they should yield, you know, concept development, and this is a truly creative area of the work.

Then there is technology itself, technology search, for example, and issues of technology surprise -- the issue that you brought up, too, about looking overseas with the allies.

Next is the experimentation program, both the joint and the service experimentation program. A key tool for the implementation.

And then the fifth area, also an implementation area having to do with operational prototyping.

We used a simple formula that "innovation equals creativity times implementation." And so you should expect a balanced approach between creativity and implementation in the staff. But it's a very small staff. It's intended to be small. On the other hand, we're meant to have a very large virtual network, meant to team broadly. And that teaming has to extend beyond the Department; it has to extend to industry. Industry is one of the great defense partners. It has to extend to the capital. It would be naive to suppose that one element of the national -- one large element of the national security partnership could transform and it not have an effect on the other elements. And consequently, there must be a dialogue and a relationship with all of those other elements as well.

Yes, sir?

Q: You mentioned the cultural impediments within the Department, but it seems that, you know, beyond just being in the department, those are within the services, too. Each of them has their own --

Cebrowski: Sure. Yeah, I included that in the outline.

Q: And in light of that, I wonder what do you plan to do to bring them all under the same tent, so to speak? And of the various services, who do you think is doing the best, so far? (Laughter.)

Cebrowski: Okay, I'm not running a beauty contest; nor am I picking winners and users! (Laughs.) So I won't go there!

Q: How do you think the Army is doing?

Cebrowski: Why did you pick Army to ask?

Q: Well, I'm with a paper in Watertown, New York -- (laughter) --

Cebrowski: Okay. Okay.

I'm sorry, I lost the drift of your first question.

Q: Bring them all under the same tent.

Cebrowski: Oh, bringing them under the tent.

The most important elements of the methodology for transformation are to do the research, get the intellectualization right, work in the sunlight. You'll probably have as many opportunities to look into the effort as I will.

And that's important, because there must be a debate, there must be the discussion, the refining -- not to attain the one best solution, because there is no such thing as the one best solution, but to understand the broadened base which we're seeking to create. Ultimately, some resource decisions will have to be made. My role is to make policy recommendations which may influence those decisions and to inform that debate to the extent it can.

Q: You mentioned the continuous adaptive acquisition, so if you're constantly changing, how do you keep the operators up to date? And you mentioned in your opening remarks that the schoolhouses are really slow to change, so are we now looking for different ways to train troops?

Cebrowski: No, schoolhouses are very good, but remember, there's a difference between education and training. You train for the known; you educate for the unknown. Education will always be important and training will be important because of the requirement to hone perishable skills which are necessary to succeed in combat. So, that goes on.

But let's go back -- what was the first part of the question again?

Q: How do you keep the operators up to date if you're continuously adapting what you're doing?

Cebrowski: Okay, that's important. That's important. Let me turn the question back to you -- if you continue to give operators systems and doctrine which had been developed based on decisions that were made sixteen to twenty-five years ago, how do you keep the operators up to date? In other words, the problem is harder now than if you go to continuous adaptive acquisition and roll things at a higher rpm.

For example, several years ago -- seven years ago, we left the WMCCS, the Worldwide Military Command and Control System, and one of the things we found with regard to WMCCS is that while people were very, very good at operating and maintaining WMCCS, and those were good Americans doing that, they worked that system for so long that in the meantime, the rest of the commercial world took information technology in a completely different direction. And those people then were at a major disadvantage in adjusting to the new realities of the information age.

Far better we continually introduce the new technologies so they can then be kept up to date. Remember, it's not an issue of keeping all of the people up to the same level -- that's not required. But you do need some people that are pretty close to the cutting edge.

Q: Then how do you rate competency, if you're constantly changing the core competency?

Cebrowski: Perhaps you change the rating criteria as well. In other words, you don't want to -- if you're going to move forward in a dynamic way, you want to cut loose from your sea anchors of, perhaps, old ways of rating people, old ways of doing personnel management and reach for something different.

Yes, ma'am?

Q: Sir, both the Congress and the GAO have criticizing DoD for not adequately supporting Army transformation. What is DoD going to do to address that?

Cebrowski: Well, why don't we take that up sometime later, after we've looked into it. But I'm not going to jump on that one.

Yes, ma'am?

Q: I'd like to follow up on the question of bringing the services under the same tent. Naval -- or network-centric warfare you said was the cornerstone of transformation, but that's a Navy term.

Cebrowski: No, it isn't. (Laughs.)

Q: Is that going to be a problem? It is associated with Navy, though.

Cebrowski: Yes, it is, because I'm the first one who said it publicly and I was wearing a Navy uniform when I did it. However, the idea really comes from Sun Microsystems, when the president of Sun talked about that it's not the computer, but it's the computer in the networked condition or the networked environment; it's about network-centric computing -- in other words, it is just a word which goes on the phenomenon of the Information Age.

And that's the -- that's what you have here.

Now one should expect there to be a natural, you know, sense of inter-service competition, which can indeed be very, very helpful. On the other hand, when I, you know, for example, in a conversation which -- with the chief of staff of the Air Force, he talked about horizontal integration and said, "You should like this concept; it's a fundamental feature of network-centric warfare." When I look at the service experimentation programs, I see that all of them are built on the fundamentals of network-centric warfare. So the reason that is, is because network-centric warfare is an expression of the Information Age.

You could put another name on it, but whichever name you pick, you want to make sure that you pick up the totality of the phenomenology of the Information Age. And that's what you see to do.

To the extent that a title becomes divisive, once you desert the title in favor of the concept, I have no problem with -- you know, with doing that. The fact of the matter is that when I look at out at the services and I see the power they're deriving from their experimentation program, it's all related to the same fundamentals -- high-quality shared awareness.

Q: Do you see the problem that all the services have different C4ISR programs that are network-centric, warfare-related, but are competing, you know --

Cebrowski: Interoperability is a major problem. If you are not interoperable, if you're not on the 'net, you're not benefiting from the Information Age, if you're not contributing, you're just not in the Information Age. You're not on the team. People do not strive to be non-interoperable, but there are forces which tend to, you know, lead people to program decisions, for example, which might result in a lack of interoperability, and those need to be addressed. And I would think your best source on that is probably Assistant Secretary Stenbit, who I believe is very vigorous in that area.

Yes, sir?

Q: You mentioned, in response to a question from, I think, Charlie, that when you were talking about what elements of transformation were visible in the present situation, which is the phrase you used, you mentioned agility. Do you see other elements of transformation in the present situation? And so what would you characterize those as being?

Cebrowski: Hm.

Q: I ask because it seems to me that so far the military have been doing in the Afghan -- in an unusual situation, the military are actually doing fairly traditional things -- you know, the Air Force -- the Navy has been bombing what it can see, and the Special Forces have been doing what they do, and the Marines have just done vertical envelopment. I don't see what's transformational. It's a strange part of the world --

Cebrowski: That's good glass-half-empty analysis.

Q: (Laughs.)

Cebrowski: (Laughs.) The -- on the -- you could adopt that. On the other hand, who is that naval aviator talking to, to deliver the ordnance? What kind of team is doing that? What's the communications medium that is for it? Is the doctrine, you know, exactly as it says in the glossy pub, or is it somewhat different?

You know -- and so I believe that there's a lot more of interest here. But I think it's also premature, particularly for a person such as myself, to talk about that. Certainly there are lessons learned, efforts going on as we speak. And I'll be keen to see them, as you are.

Yes, sir?

Q: Admiral, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about political cultures. When you do prototyping, there's an assumption that some of the prototypes aren't going to work out as you might have hoped. When you do things in the sunshine, your failures are going to be out there for everyone to see. What's your assessment of the political culture in Washington and its willingness to accept those kinds of setbacks on the road to transformation?

Cebrowski: Whenever there's transformation, there will be, as I mentioned, dislocations because a decision will be made this way versus some other way -- frequently the new at the expense of the past. And so there's the dislocation.

That dislocation is represented in the form of constituencies, and those constituencies have a legitimate voice. It is incumbent on us to make the logic clear and compelling, to work with both the constituents and their representatives so that they are aware in advance, and that the larger political system understand that -- that something is created here and that that creation is to the benefit of the nation, and that new creation itself will have constituencies which will be just as vocal as the ones from the past.

When one does things under a bushel, as opposed to in the sunlight, then both the constituencies and their representatives are surprised, and so one should expect, then, a human cry from them, quite legitimate to say, "Why wasn't I kept informed so that I can make adjustments in advance, rather than being led down a path which is going to go nowhere?" So working in the sunlight continues to be good.

Next, with regard to failures, to put one's failures in the sunlight is excellent, so that other people can learn from them, as well. And we have a responsibility to do that.

Yes, ma'am?

Q: You mentioned the joint mission capability packages, and I was wondering if you could describe a little bit what you have in mind there, and also if you ever envision a standing joint force of any kind?

Cebrowski: Okay. The mission capabilities package in, I guess in a sentence, could be described as the sum total of that which is necessary to perform a task. And so it is not a system in the sense of a hardware system. Rather, it is a system in the sense of the total capability. And when one makes decisions based on that package, one is led to different conclusions. For example, with regard to interoperability, then becomes, you know, quite obvious that this has to be addressed, then, in a way quite differently from before.

But this concept of mission capabilities package -- I suspect you're going to hear a good deal more about that as the months unfold.

You had another question, too.

Q: Yes. Do you ever envision a standing joint force of some sort? That was recommended by some of the panels earlier this year.

Cebrowski: Yeah. I expect there to be a considerable exploration of that and further definition of it over time. It's something which has captured the imagination of several people, and consequently it deserves research and attention, and I believe it will get it.

Yes, sir?

Q: One of your five subject areas was technology. Can you talk a little bit about technology and its role in transformation?

Cebrowski: Within technology there are -- opportunities are created for -- you know, for competitive advantage. One of the ones which springs to mind, for example, is stealth. Another one is very high-volume information sharing -- very robust information sharing and its attendant networking. So technology has created an opportunity to do something which you simply couldn't do before. In other words, you can acquire a capability or at the very least a competitive attribute which, for some period of time, is not readily available to a potential adversary. And so it's very worthwhile to pursue technology when one's working in the area of transformation.

There is also the issue of -- on the threat side of technology, technological surprise. It's worth looking at. With regard to technological surprise, just a couple of thoughts, here, is that frequently we look overseas for technological surprise. And what I would argue, as I did earlier, is that one should also look overseas for technological opportunity, as well. But in focusing overseas for technological surprise, we often miss the fact that a large amount of technological surprise occurs within the United States, and this takes me back then to the notion of sharing with industry, which means more than the defense industry. It actually defines the defense industry in much broader strokes than we did before, because certainly technological surprise could appear in other than the defense industry.

Yes, sir?

Q: Secretary Rumsfeld has said on a number of occasions that he thinks the term "high-demand, low-density" is just a euphemism for the department not buying enough of the right things. (Laughter.) Is that your view? How do you --

Cebrowski: You shouldn't expect me to disagree with that. (Laughter.)

Q: How do you get around -- I mean, would it be -- the high-demand, low-density issue with respect to transformation, how do you get around it?

Cebrowski: If you look at the high-density, low-demand items, you will find that the vast majority of those relate to sensors. Okay? And that is a telling story. Okay? We have been talking about high-density, low-demand in this way for many years, the better part of a decade, and we're still talking about it today. Okay? It indicates that we made -- or we passed up an opportunity to reallocate assets or resources towards that as long as 10 years ago. And to the extent that those things persist, it means we persist to make that reallocation error.

All right? The fact of the matter is that we move into the Information Age you use the substitution of information for mass, and information product moves to primacy. Therefore, those things which are capable of generating information product become critically important. And over time, as we move into the Information Age, you should expect to see the allocation of resources shifting in the favor of information systems, information-product generators, and all those related activities. To the extent that they haven't, may represent a physical and budgetary manifestation of cultural resistance to change.

And so it's -- I don't think I could put a sharper point on what the secretary said. In other words, if you're going to live in the Information Age, you ought to allocate your resources consistent with that age so that you can leverage the power that comes from it.

Let's see, who didn't talk yet? (Laughter.)

Q: I'm sorry.

Q: That's all right.

Q: Now I forgot! (Laughter.) We've been hearing consistently from the Department the ways in which the conflict in Afghanistan has proved the QDR right, have proved the QDR correct; proved elements of the QDR right; that the QDR was moving in the right direction.

But your job, of course, is not just to follow the QDR blindly --

Cebrowski: That's right.

Q: -- but to better the transformation effort. So what are some of the shortfalls that you see -- shortcomings of the QDR, given the current situation? Are there any things that could be improved, or any things in the QDR that were outright wrong?

Cebrowski: I don't think that the authors of the QDR would say that the QDR is definitive.

Q: Right.

Cebrowski: And even though it's a document which represents a milepost in time, that's what it is, is a -- you know, is really a milepost. It's an important milepost, one that deserves to be honored. On the other hand, it should not proscribe growth, and I don't believe that the authors would intend that it do that. If I could expand on that just a little bit with regard to the focus of this office, it might help put that in perspective.

There is a considerable element of discovery and invention in the work of this office. Our special operating domain is at the intersection of unarticulated needs and non-consensual change; that is to identify needs which are not yet recognized or articulated, and methods to address those needs which were not necessarily recognized or approved. Okay? And so one could see and hear immediately the barriers to this kind of work. It's why I have no illusions about the degree of difficulty. To the extent that a service or agency has already undertaken a transformation effort, addressed a need with perhaps a bold new way, that is laudable and should be encouraged. But at that point, you know, I'm not needed because the system is fully capable of addressing those things. What my job is is to encourage the discovery and invention portion.

Okay. There you go.

Q: Admiral, you spoke --

Cebrowski: I guess this will have to be the -- you're standing up meaning that --

Clarke: It's my job to wrap it up, unfortunately.

Cebrowski: Your job. Okay.

Q: -- about the continuing introduction of new technologies and the operational prototypes, does that suggest some kind of a closer tie between the military on a -- sort of a real-time basis with senior officers about testing these systems, sort of a -- more of a brotherhood or a sisterhood there than currently exists?

And does that also suggest new ways of -- you talked about getting rid of old ways of doing personnel management, moving to something. Do you see any kind of a quick transition of officers moving out of military into industry, back into the military -- that type of thing? Or do you see any other changes in personnel?

Cebrowski: Yeah, that latter piece, I haven't thought about a very great deal. But addressing the former one, it is frequently said that officers involved in new ideas need to stay in place for very long periods of time to have at least some degree of stability in this. And one could do that, and indeed, we've done that in some specialized cases.

However, what I think would be a very useful approach is, again, in operational prototyping, to introduce something to the operating forces so that the ranks get an opportunity to join into this process on the ground floor, and consequently, they will grow up with the capability. The young officers and enlisted personnel who, for example, are working with the U.S. Marines in this -- on this ship that they're using out in the Pacific, are in on the ground floor of something; they are part of the development of the doctrine, and indeed, the requirements over time. And they may have a 25-year career ahead of them working with that kind of capability.

Next, this kind of innovation or experimentation is really a very powerful element of leadership. A good leader crafts the future for his people and then shows them their place in it. To the extent that leadership continues to focus on past practices, methods and systems, they fail to perform that most vital leadership function and, hence, will not inspire their subordinates to that future -- to the future. And so it should come as no surprise to those leaders when their subordinates desert the ranks when it comes to -- you know, when they get an opportunity to leave military service and go other.

An experimentation program, a prototyping program, a concept development program into which many people are broadly invited -- again, a reason to work in the sunlight -- helps that leader in the creation of that future, pointing the way to the subordinates to their role in that future. Very, very powerful leadership tool.

Q: And just one quick follow up. Do you expect your charter to be personnel management system reviews, to look at the way that the military personnel system is structured, as far as retirement and early out -- I mean early retirement, and so forth?

Cebrowski: The personnel capability, the whole notion of intellectual capital and the primacy of people, you know, cannot be overstated and has to be factored into everything that we do. But I have no intentions of trying to insert myself into decisions about -- fine grain decisions about, you know, personnel -- personnel policies, but rather, concern myself more with the broad implications of transformation for personnel policies.

Again, thank you very, very much. I hope I have an opportunity to come back and talk to you again. I've been told that the secretary would like to do that. At that time, I'm sure I'll talk a good deal less. And I look forward to the opportunity.

Q: Thank you.
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http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov2001/t11272001_t1127ceb.html

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/Parameters/Articles/01winter/adams.htm

Future Warfare and the Decline of Human Decisionmaking
THOMAS K. ADAMS
© 2001 Thomas K. Adams

From Parameters, Winter 2001-02, pp. 57-71.

To date, most warfare has taken place within what Robert J. Bunker terms "human space," meaning the traditional four-dimensional battlespace that is discernible to the human senses.[1] In essence, war has always consisted of human beings running, dodging, and hurling things at each other, lately with the help of machinery. Even such revolutionary developments as gunpowder only enhanced our ability to throw things at enemies we could see and hear.

The first crude examples of autonomous weapons were probably the early experiments by the US Navy and Sperry Gyroscope Company on unpiloted aircraft during the last years of the First World War. Then came the advent of electronics, especially radar, and warfare began to leave the realm of human senses. Ships and planes could fire on enemies that were no more than ghostly green images on a cathode ray tube. Later came military robots such as cruise missiles that were able to autonomously execute missions formerly requiring manned systems. Advanced radar engagement systems enabled pilots to locate, identify, and destroy enemy aircraft without ever seeing them. Some robotic systems became even more independent, such as the Navy's Phalanx close-in air defense weapon, which is "capable of autonomously performing its own search, detect, evaluation, track, engage, and kill assessment functions."[2] Thanks to advanced sensors and information processing, target recognition and identification methods are being developed to permit truly autonomous guided munitions. This includes munitions capable of autonomously engaging fixed and mobile ground targets, as well as targets in air and space.[3] Warfare has begun to leave "human space."

A long step in this direction was taken in mid-2000 when the US Senate Armed Services Committee added $246.3 million to its version of the 2001 defense authorization bill to speed development of unmanned combat systems. The committee set two ambitious goals--within ten years, one third of all deep-strike aircraft would be unmanned; and within 15 years, one third of ground combat vehicles would operate without human beings on board.[4] At about the same time, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Army selected initial contractors for the Army's planned Objective Force. The concept calls for "a network-centric, distributed force that will include a manned command and control element/personnel carrier, a robotic direct-fire system, a robotic non-line of sight system, an all-weather robotic sensor system, coupled with other layered sensors."[5] According to Lieutenant Colonel John Blitch, program manager for DARPA's Tactical Mobile Robotics Program, "We have spent a lot of time and energy analyzing employment concepts for portable robotic platforms over the last few years and are convinced of their revolutionary impact on dismounted warfare."[6] These initiatives and others are rapidly taking us to a place where we may not want to go, but probably are unable to avoid.

Once this progression of ever more capable machines began, the US armed forces, and those of other advanced countries, started down a road that will probably remove warfare almost entirely from human hands. Several trends are contributing to this unsettling development, but the most important one is the rise of computer-driven information systems coupled with the proliferation of mobile autonomous and semi-autonomous systems (i.e. "robots"). The devices created by this coupling greatly increase the speed at which things happen, especially weapon effects and information processing. A much less noticed trend, the development of very cheap and very small military systems, will also help to move warfare even further out of "human space." In combination, these advances have a synergistic effect. More and more aspects of warfighting are not only leaving the realm of human senses, but also crossing outside the limits of human reaction times. The effect of these trends is already being enhanced by the emergence of directed energy weapons (DEWs) with their capacity for engagement at the speed of light.

In short, the military systems (including weapons) now on the horizon will be too fast, too small, too numerous, and will create an environment too complex for humans to direct. Furthermore, the proliferation of information-based systems will produce a data overload that will make it difficult or impossible for humans to directly intervene in decisionmaking. This is not a consideration for the remote science-fiction future. Weapons and other military systems already under development will function at increasingly higher levels of complexity and responsibility--and increasingly without meaningful human intervention.

According to the US Army Infantry School, "We intend to transform the Army, all components, into a standard design with internetted C4ISR."[7] And, it is well known that various "digital army" initiatives such as the Land Warrior system and the Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below are under way.[8] Likewise, a number of unmanned and semi-autonomous systems are already in wide use, and autonomous systems are in prototype or development.[9] The first operational light-speed weapon, the US Air Force's Yal-1a Attack Laser (also known as ABL or Airborne Laser), is slated for operational readiness by 2003. Others, such as high-power microwave and particle-beam devices, are under development.[10] At Sandia National Laboratories, tiny MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) already exist in prototype form.[11]

None of this is accidental. For one thing, it is national policy, articulated by former President Bill Clinton as a critical part of the national security strategy.[12] Second, it has been pursued tenaciously by the military despite expense, setbacks, and criticism. Knowledge is seen as the key to "battlefield dominance," and speed is seen as the key to exploiting that knowledge. We have made these two qualities--knowledge (information) and speed--the keystones of planning for the future Army and the other services as well. Army After Next (AAN) forces are expected to need both "linear speed" (speed across the ground) and "angular speed" (the ability to out-think and anticipate) in order to survive and win on future battlefields.[13] Like the chiefs of the other services, General Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, has clearly stated that he endorses this concept.[14] It is believed that these qualities--information dominance, combined with speed and agility--will lead to military dominance at all levels of warfare: strategic, operational, and tactical.[15]

Military discussions of advanced warfighting (as opposed to scientific or technical ones) occasionally include the reassurance that there will always be an immediate, direct, and intimate connection between human beings and warfighting. According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "The purpose of technology is to equip the man. We must not fall prey to the mistaken notion technology can reduce warfare to simply manning the equipment."[16] As a white paper from the US Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) put it, "Autonomous unmanned systems will be fully adaptive to unforeseen changes while remaining completely predictable in mission performance."[17]

We are faced with the prospect of equipment that not only does not require soldiers to operate it, but may be defeated if humans do attempt to exert control in any direct way. It is easy to see a steadily decreasing role for humans in direct combat as the 21st century progresses.

Information Systems

The fundamental development underlying the loss of human control is that of automated information systems. Furthermore, the impressive current capabilities of such systems may only hint at their future capacity. Quoting again from the TRADOC white paper:

    Advances in computer architecture and machine intelligence will have reached the point where intelligent agents can analyze the environment and current battle situation, search likely target areas, detect and analyze targets, assist in attack decisions, select and dispense munitions, and report results. These unmanned systems will augment manned platforms in every facet of operations on the ground, sea, air, and space, including information dominance and manipulation.[18]

The difference between a machine that can do all these things and "assist in attack decisions" and one that makes its own "attack decisions" is a matter of programming. This is a description of machines that can function autonomously to conduct warfare at the tactical level. If anything, this description is probably a gross understatement.

Current computers have not even begun to approach their theoretical limits, and those limits continue to recede. In 1998, scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico announced that they had been able to consistently manipulate subatomic particles, thus opening to the way for computation and communication systems orders of magnitude smaller and faster than the ones now in existence.[19] In 1999 researchers at UCLA and Hewlett-Packard succeeded in constructing microscopic integrated circuits using single molecules as building blocks. James Heath, the UCLA professor leading the project, suggested that a molecular computer with the processing power of 100 conventional personal computers would be about the size of a grain of salt. The implications are almost unimaginable--cheap, ubiquitous supercomputing, and unlimited memory capacity in devices so small that they are on the scale of insects.[20]

This is not to suggest that there will ever be an overriding decision to exclude humans from decisionmaking. Instead, we will continue to pretend to be in complete control while leading ourselves gradually and incrementally toward systems whose logic demands that human control become more abstract with less and less direct participation.

Mastering the OODA Loop

The entry point for automated systems to join the military decisionmaking process is described in abstract form by the so-called "OODA" Loop: observe, orient, decide, and act.[21] For purposes of this discussion, the loop can be seen as beginning with "observation," and indeed there will be a great deal of observation connected with future military organizations.

An enormous amount of attention (and money) has been invested in observation in the form of new surveillance and reconnaissance technology. Development of these capabilities has become increasingly vital with the Army Chief of Staff's 1999 announcement that he plans to field units whose very survival is largely dependent on information collection and advanced information systems.[22] This meshes nicely with the TRADOC view of the future: "The use of multiple, inexpensive unmanned platforms with modular sensor and information-gathering devices provide for an almost unlimited ability to analyze the battlespace. These sensor platforms will be land-based (both mobile and stationary), airborne, and space-based."[23] As explained by Major General John Thomas, commander of the US Army Intelligence Center at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, this kind of information saturation is essential. The Army's new lightly armored "medium brigades" will have intelligence and sensor assets equivalent to those of a full division. These new brigades are expected to survive by using these assets to avoid the enemy, using superior knowledge, terrain, and agility to remain out of enemy fields of fire. According to General Thomas, "Probably the largest and most exciting area is in robotics so that many of these sensors can be automatically emplaced and maybe even autonomously emplaced."[24]

But victory does not always go the commander with the best observation. It goes to the one that can best process observation into data, data into information, information into orders, and then orders into action. The process is continuous--the results of action are observed, starting the process all over again. The individual functions involved have been enshrined in military jargon as the OODA Loop mentioned above.[25] The notion of mastering this process, "getting inside the enemy's decision loop" (i.e. execute the OODA process more quickly than the enemy) is at the heart of the digital Army and the information warfare concept.

By 2025, speed-of-light engagement will be a common feature of military conflict. Future architectures envision a new array of ground- and space-based sensors, uninhabited combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), and missile defense technologies that will take advantage of directed energy weapons. Air, sea, land, and space forces will be both faster and more agile. Adversaries will take advantage of these characteristics to operate faster than a defender can observe the activity, orient himself, decide how to respond, and act on that decision. The attacker thus places himself "inside" the defender's OODA Loop, destroying an adversary's ability to conduct an active defense.[26]

To master the OODA Loop in this demanding environment, military leaders are pushing hard for the technology to obtain and process more information more rapidly. This push attempts to achieve the core capability of information dominance, "the ability to collect, control, exploit, and defend information while denying an adversary the ability to do the same."[27] From the perspective of an Army organized around automated information systems, the struggle to get inside the enemy decision loop is one of processing power, the ability to move through the loop ever more rapidly.

When improved sensors are coupled with extensive communications links and advanced data-processing, the result is an ever-increasing flow of detailed information. Unfortunately, the explosion of available information inevitably results in information overload and flawed decisionmaking. Human beings commonly deal with this by ignoring much of the inflow, thus negating the purpose of the information systems in the first place. Recent exercises reveal an alarming number of unread messages because of information overload. As the quantity of data rises, the difficulty of preparing and interpreting it for decisionmaking grows. Furthermore, more information, flowing more efficiently, can easily give the commander conflicting perspectives of the battlespace. Soon it becomes obvious that the slowest element in the process is the human decisionmaker. By reducing the human role, the entire system is enhanced.

Automated systems, using some form of artificial intelligence, may be the solution to this difficulty. As an Air Force document asserts: "Unmanned systems will capitalize on artificial intelligence technology gains to be able to assess operational and tactical situations and determine an appropriate course of action. The key to the success of command and control is information. Some of these systems will not only collect data but also have the ability to analyze data and provide recommendations to the commander."[28] Operationally, the difference between "providing" a recommendation and "acting" on a recommendation is merely a software tweak.

Automated systems can certainly reduce the pressure of information saturation and eliminate conflicts, but at a price. Essentially, they do so by creating a series of information "filters" that establish priorities and eliminate marginal data, reconcile the remaining information conflicts, and present a consensus picture of the situation. All of this is invisible to the ultimate consumer, out of his or her control and very likely not well understood. This means that the commander is receiving a picture of the battlefield that is designed to emphasize certain things while de-emphasizing others. Still other factors are omitted entirely.

Autonomy

STAR 21, an Army study of 21st-century needs, concluded that unmanned systems will become prevalent on the land battlefield.[29] The rise of unmanned ground systems is the most important step toward autonomous systems for land warfare, a rise that is already in full progress. As envisioned by the Army Training and Doctrine Command:

    Unmanned systems will operate throughout the depth, width, and breadth of the battlespace, providing both the real-time intelligence necessary for the commander to locate and identify key targets, as well as the means to destroy them. . . . [A]utonomous convoys loaded with the necessary supplies to replenish expenditures can be dispatched from ports or airheads to central logistics bases. From there, the unmanned systems can transport the supplies further forward. . . .

    Future battles will have unmanned systems as forward sensor/observers detecting and identifying high-value targets and calling for fires.[30]

Unmanned systems have been around for a long time in the form of multimillion-dollar cruise missiles and the like. After all, the long-range cruise missile is nothing more than an unmanned bomber, an autonomous aerial vehicle or, simply put, a robot.[31] But now such systems are cheaper, smaller, and more capable than seemed possible even a few years ago. In 1998, for example, an autonomous aircraft no bigger than a large model airplane and weighing just 29 pounds flew across the Atlantic Ocean, successfully arriving at a predetermined destination.[32] The US Department of Defense has an extensive military robotics program, and by 2005 DOD is expected to spend $72 million on unmanned ground vehicles alone.[33] Unmanned systems have supported the Bosnia mission in the areas of reconnaissance (with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and mine-clearing using Standardized Robotic System kits on manned platforms.[34] The DARPA Unmanned Ground Vehicle Demo 11 program has fielded four HMMWVs reconfigured as unmanned scout vehicles.[35]

The difference between a truly autonomous system and one that is merely unmanned is another question of processing power. As mentioned earlier, the coming micro-miniaturization of computer systems will eventually make it possible to pack computing power greater than a year 2001 mainframe system into a device that is barely visible.[36] The immediate prospect is for cheap computers small enough to be used in almost any device, followed at some point in the more distant future by ubiquitous supercomputing and unlimited memory capacity in devices that are literally microscopic. These developments are important for their own sake, but also in the present context because they set the stage for autonomy.

As the TRADOC white paper put it, "Unmanned systems may have the ability to learn. The concept of collective leadership and subordination will then permit systems working under human supervision to assist the warfighter in the accomplishment of his mission."[37] As this quote suggests, TRADOC publications in particular are careful to specify that human decisionmaking will be involved at some level in the operation of these systems. However, there is no a priori reason why this should be so. Inevitably, some adversary will decide that eliminating humans from the military decision cycle at the tactical level will confer a significant advantage, forcing others to follow suit.

The logic leading to fully autonomous systems seems inescapable. Clearly, the armed forces will want a "person in the loop" no matter how capable the automated system may become. However, if this person has a meaningful role in the operation of the system (for example, a tank, fighting ship, or warplane), then he or she will obviously be the most critical (and probably the most vulnerable) component of the system as well as the most difficult to replace. The obvious course for an adversary attacking the tank, ship, or plane is to concentrate on attacking the human component. This probability creates serious design restraints and restrictions in performance since protecting the human becomes critically important and imposes a burden in armor, life support, sustainable g-forces, and so forth. This provides a strong incentive not to include humans in the systems at all.

The obvious response to this threat is that favored by the Air Force for some applications, "fly-by-wire." This means simply that a human located safely away from the battle scene remotely pilots the aircraft by radio control. In principle, there is no reason this solution could not be applied to ground vehicles and ships, or at least to surface vessels (submarines present a different problem). Unfortunately this solution has its own vulnerabilities--the enemy's priority then becomes to attack the remote control links electromagnetically by jamming or physically by attacking the transmitter.[38] This becomes all the more troublesome when cross-continental control is required. Having extended links gives the enemy a logical place to attack that is hard to defend. Systems will need at least some measure of local autonomy in order to survive. Fully autonomous systems avoid all these difficulties while allowing a less vulnerable, higher performance system.

But even if full autonomy is rejected, the presence of humans making critical decisions still does not avoid the issue. Given that such persons have a real, rather than merely symbolic, role in the command and control of the fighting system, consideration must be given to the possibility that they will be injured or killed and cannot carry out their duties. It seems unreasonable that the highly trained crew and their multimillion-dollar ship or aircraft would simply be written off as a casualty. It is far more sensible to design the system so as to continue to operate the plane or vessel and, if necessary, continue the fight. This is nothing more than autonomy arrived at by a slightly different route.

The trend toward reliance on automation and artificial intelligence can be seen in the Navy's Smart Ship Program, which is spending millions of dollars to replace personnel with technology. By 2005, this program is expected to reduce the number of sailors on the Navy's 27 CG 47 Ticonderoga-class cruisers by replacing them with new control, automation, damage control, and information technologies. Shortly afterward, 57 of the DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers will be likewise refitted. According to Navy plans, the crew of the new DD-21 "land attack" destroyers could number as few as 95. Current destroyers and cruisers carry more than 300 sailors on board.[39] These improvements aren't cheap. Refitting the 27 Ticonderoga-class cruisers alone will cost $124 million. But according to a Navy assessment, lower manpower costs, less maintenance, and fewer support costs will save nearly $3 million a year per ship.[40] Another example is the "arsenal ship" proposal in which a stealthy, unmanned vessel would loiter off an enemy shore and fire guns or missiles at the command of air or ground forces located elsewhere.[41]

In sum, this approach results in the development of systems that take the operator "out of the loop," shifting the role of the human operator from that of an active controller to that of a supervisor who serves in a fail-safe capacity in the event of system malfunction. Unfortunately, the role of passive monitor seems to be a task for which humans are poorly suited.[42]

Speed

Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs), including laser, microwave, and charged particle or neutral particle beam devices, are a major emerging military technology that enormously increases the speed with which weapon effects occur. All are based on the emission of electromagnetic energy at different frequencies, usually in focused beams. They can be vastly more accurate than conventional weapons because they follow line-of-sight rather than ballistic trajectories, thus eliminating all the problems of ballistics.[43] Researchers and engineers are now developing a wide range of these devices.[44] The first operational laser weapon, the US Air Force's Yal-1a Attack Laser, will be followed by Army and Navy systems. One of these, the Army's Tactical High Energy Laser Demonstrator, scored a first on 28 August 2000 by using a deployable laser system to successfully track and destroy a salvo of two Katyusha artillery rockets in flight. Other applications are being examined through the Army's "virtual test bed" for vehicle-mounted directed energy weapons.[45]

One advantage of such weapons is that missing the target is less important, since the system will be able to cycle quickly and fire off another speed-of-light burst, this time having corrected its aim. With DEWs, active countermeasures (dodging, throwing chaff, deploying decoys, returning fire) become enormously more difficult and in many cases impossible. It is hard to see many roles for humans in this kind of lightning duel. Human perceptions and motor coordination skills are simply not capable of intervening usefully. Defense then relies on instantaneous, automated responses and passive measures, of which the best are probably speed and size. Small, agile, very fast-moving targets, other things being equal, are harder to detect and much harder to hit.[46] This will place a premium on micro-systems, to be discussed later. The same qualities that make such systems harder to target and strike also make them much more difficult to control in anything approaching human "real-time."[47]

As indicated by the Army's tactical laser systems, DEWs are not limited to strategic weapon systems.[48] A variety of threats--short-range rockets and artillery, UAVs, cruise missiles, pop-up helicopters--can appear quickly and without warning. When a threat is not detected until late or its unmasked time is short, there is no second chance. Countering these threats requires a weapon that is fast, accurate, and close-in. On 22 April 1999, Boeing completed proof-of-concept testing of a new tactical high-energy chemical laser. As described by Boeing, this technology "permits . . . highly mobile, self-contained laser weapons with significant lethality at engagement ranges up to 10 km for ground-to-air defensive systems, and over 20 km for air-to-ground or air-to-air systems." The company's plans include "complete weapon systems in roll-on, roll-off installations for rotorcraft (V-22, CH-47), aircraft (AC-130), and ground vehicles." Boeing says that such a system could be ready in about two years.[49] With different sensors and fire control it also offers a unique ultra-precise strike capability for operations other than war, where pinpoint accuracy, tactical stand-off, and no collateral damage are dominant considerations.[50]

Perhaps the extreme example of warfare outside "human space" is that of "netwar"--electronic conflict within and among computer systems attacking the full spectrum of opposing military and civilian information systems (including computer-controlled networks such as communications, logistics, and transportation). By its nature, the speed of such conflict is limited only by the speed of the electronic circuits in which it occurs. This is another example of conflict that will quickly escalate out of human control due to its complexity and rapidity. Netwar attacks may be too pervasive and rapid for human intervention, adapting instantly to responses. Both attack and defense will be completely automated, because humans are far too slow to participate.[51]

Smaller and Smaller

Small systems are highly desirable for military purposes, especially in a force-projection Army. Smaller systems require less space, thus fewer airframes to transport, and they use less fuel in operation. They are more difficult for the enemy to detect and, once detected, harder to hit. The viability of such "small, smart, systems" was demonstrated on 11 January 1999, when Lockheed Martin began DOD-sponsored flight tests on an aircraft with a wingspan of six inches--about the size of an outstretched hand. The aircraft, which weighs only three ounces, is one of the smallest man-made flying objects.[52]

It is (once again) the presence of micro-electronics that makes the difference between the Lockheed Martin device and an ordinary model airplane. Miniaturized electronic circuits have revolutionized military electronics. Similarly, the miniaturization of mechanical systems is expected to launch another revolution. Military commanders will have very small, very smart machines to more effectively collect target and damage assessment information with reduced risk to personnel and decreased probability of discovery. Swarms (hundreds or thousands) of miniature autonomous vehicles will be capable of performing tasks that are difficult or impossible today, such as locating and disabling land mines, detecting chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, and verifying treaties.

During the 1990s, Sandia National Laboratories produced an early example of a microsystem, the Miniature Autonomous Robotic Vehicle (MARV). MARV is one cubic inch in size and is made primarily from commercial parts using ordinary machining techniques. Despite its small size, it contains all its needed power, sensors, computers, and controls. MARV is severely limited in its operation, but it is leading to even smaller autonomous vehicles with greatly enhanced mobility, more intelligence, on-board navigation and communication, as well as the ability to act cooperatively with other robots.[53] Sandia is also developing technologies to rapidly machine, fixture, and assemble Small Smart Machine devices, including automated assembly of parts down to 100 microns in size.[54]

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), researchers have devised much tinier robots, similar to ants, which exhibit certain limited aspects of intelligence and differentiated specialization, such as avoiding shadows and staying away from each other. They are cheap and easy to reprogram. According to researchers, "Thirty-five years from now, analogous small, lethal, sensing, emitting, flying, crawling, exploding, and thinking objects may make the battlefield highly lethal."[55]

Very small systems have several advantages. As noted earlier, it is easier to quickly transport huge numbers of them, both sensors and fighting systems. They also can be moved at speeds, accelerations, decelerations, and in intricate maneuvers that human beings could never withstand. It is conceivable to move enormous numbers of these devices at ballistic missile speeds, having them in action half a world away in minutes. In such circumstances, operating according to preset instructions may not provide the necessary flexibility in operation, and remote control is probably impractical. Once again, this leads us back to autonomy.

The nature of small systems is such that they are more difficult to hit with conventional projectile weapons due to their small size and large numbers. This applies even to some DEWs, such as lasers. The logical countermeasure for very small, smart systems deployed in large numbers is probably an energy weapon with an area effect such as an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device. Once again this is likely to lead to the play and counterplay of extremely rapid autonomous systems functioning far too quickly for human intervention.

Solutions

If the problem is how to maintain meaningful human control of autonomous warfighting systems, no good solution presents itself. One answer, of course, is to simply accept a slower information-processing rate as the price of keeping humans in the military decision business. The problem is that some adversary will inevitably decide that the way to defeat the human-centric systems is to attack it with systems that are not so limited.

A longer-range solution is to integrate humans and machines in a far more intimate fashion. Once form of this concept is that of the Air Force's Information Integration Center (IIC). In this scheme, all-source information collectors would transmit raw data to an IIC. Archival databases linked to the center would be used for historical analyses to fill information gaps. The IIC, housed in an integrated and interconnected constellation of "smart" satellites, will analyze, correlate, fuse, and "deconflict" all relayed data. The refined data would be relayed to human users through implanted microscopic chips, providing users with computer-generated mental visualizations. This would allow the user to place himself or herself into the selected battlespace.[56] It would avoid the need for clumsy interfaces by making humans a part of the information system in a way very similar to that in which the computers are connected. But, like "fly-by-wire" systems, it does depend on broadcast information at radio frequencies, raising the serious possibility of jamming or other forms of interference.

In the further future, the arrival of very advanced, microscopic information systems may allow extremely sophisticated data processing capacities to be made an integral part of the human brain. However, assuming this proves to be possible, such a step may raise objections from those who object on moral and ethical grounds to blurring the distinction between humans and machines. It also does not address the relative fragility of human beings in combat situations.

Conclusions

The evolution and adaptation of the systems and processes described here are not as simple nor as straightforward as it might seem. The effective use of such technologies will require rapid, effective, and close interaction between many different systems. It will involve sophisticated command and control links as well as a variety of technical means, including reconnaissance sensors, communication links, computers, display systems, and weapon platforms. This kind of new and subtle interaction will require radical changes in the architecture and integration of these interconnected and widespread intelligence absorbing, processing, and application systems. Right now, the architectures for this kind of "system of systems" are barely in the developmental stages. The actual achievement of solutions for the integration of such large, complex systems will be a long process involving extensive experimentation. At least another decade, probably two, will be required.

This leaves us in something like the position of monarchies witnessing the democratic revolution at the beginning of the 19th century. Something profound and far-reaching is going on all around us, even within our own societies. But the advisers, courtiers, and generals that surround the throne are at a loss to determine what it means, much less what to do about it.

Humans may retain symbolic authority, but automated systems move too fast and the factors involved are too complex for real human comprehension. When computers are designed and programmed by other computers, the situation will be even further from anything humans can reasonably expect to understand, much less intervene in successfully. At the same time, loud denials can be expected from some quarters, angrily claiming that humans are as much, if not more, in charge than ever. In a sense this will be true--the new systems will enable people to accomplish far more in war and peace than was even conceivable before their development, or, rather, is even conceivable now. But the simple fact remains, the farther we extend our reach outside "human space," the more we require the assistance of machines.

Future generations may come to regard tactical warfare as properly the business of machines and not appropriate for people at all. Humans may retain control at the highest levels, making strategic decisions about where and when to strike and, most important, the overall objectives of a conflict. But even these will increasingly be informed by automated information systems. Direct human participation in warfare is likely to be rare. Instead, the human role will take other forms--strategic direction perhaps, or at the very extreme, perhaps no more than the policy decision whether to enter hostilities or not. Nevertheless, wars are a human phenomenon, arising from human needs for human purposes. This makes intimate human participation at some level critical, or the entire exercise becomes pointless.

NOTES

The author wishes to express his gratitude to Lieutenant Colonel John Blitch, program manager for DARPA's Tactical Mobile Robotics Program, for agreeing to review this material. However, his review does not imply endorsement. The observations and opinions expressed, as well as any errors or omissions, remain the sole responsibility of the author.

1. Robert J. Bunker, Five-Dimensional (Cyber) Warfighting (Carlisle, Pa.: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 10 March 1998), pp. 7-8.

2. US Navy, Phalanx CIWS (Close-In Weapon System) information sheet, internet, http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/weapons/wep-phal.html, accessed 11 December 2000.

3. "Our Mission," Public Affairs Office, Advanced Guidance Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio, March 2000.

4. "Gearing Up for Robot Wars," Army Times, 29 May 2000, p. 6.

5. US Department of Defense, "DARPA and Army Select Contractors for Future Combat Systems Programs," News Release No. 236-00, OASD (Public Affairs), Washington, D.C., 9 May 2000.

6. Conversation with the author, 21 December 2000. Lieutenant Colonel Blitch is also the former chief of unmanned systems at the US Special Operations Command.

7. US Army Infantry School, "Brigade Combat Team Briefing," Ft. Benning, Ga., undated, received 13 March 2000. "C4ISR" stands for "command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance."

8. Brian Palmer, "The Army and Partner Raytheon Reinvent the Foot Soldier," Fortune, 21 December 1998.

9. DARPA Tech99 Tactical Mobile Robots Presentation, slides 8, 9, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Washington, D.C., 1999.

10. Boeing Defense Group of Seattle, Wash., is building the prototype. "USAF Yal-1a Attack Laser Fact Sheet," US Air Force Research Laboratory, Office of Public Affairs, Kirtland AFB, N.M., January 1998.

11. William Trimmer, "Grand in Purpose, Insignificant in Size," Tenth Annual International Workshop on "Micro Electro Mechanical Systems," Nagoya, Japan, 1997, Proceedings, IEEE Catalog Number 97CH36021, pp. 9-13.

12. William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (Washington: The White House, February 1996), p. 1.

13. Robert H. Scales, Jr., "America's Army: Preparing for Tomorrow's Security Challenges," Army Issue Paper No. 2 (Carlisle, Pa.: US Army War College, November 1998), p. 8.

14. For example, "Statement of the Chief of Staff before the Airland Subcommittee," Committee on Armed Services, US Senate, 106th Cong., 8 March 2000, internet, http://www.army.mil/armyvision/docs/000308es.pdf, accessed 12 December 2000.

15. Discussed in US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Knowledge and Speed--Battle Forces and the US Army of 2025," Deputy Chief of Staff for Doctrine, US Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1998.

16. Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Concept for Joint Operations" (Washington: DOD, May 1997), p. 24.

17. US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Concept of Employment for Unmanned Systems (Draft)," 24 August 1999, p. 4. See also US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Unmanned System Future Capability (Working Draft)," 19 August 1999.

18. Ibid.

19. "Breakthrough Made in Subatomic Manipulation," Scripps-Howard newspapers, 8 November 1998, internet, http://www.nandotimes.com, accessed 8 November 1998.

20. "Just Right for Mini-Me: the Mini-Micro-PC," Time Digital, 18 July 1999.

21. See, for example, David S. Fadok, et al., "Air Power's Quest for Strategic Paralysis," (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1995), p. 16.

22. Eric K. Shinseki, The Army Vision (Washington: Department of the Army, Office of the Chief of Staff, January 2000).

23. US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Concept of Employment for Unmanned Systems (Draft)," p. 12.

24. Quoted in Jane's Defense Weekly, 21 June 2000, internet, http://www.janes.com/defence/interviews/dw000621_i.shtml, accessed 18 June 2001.

25. See, for example, Fadok, et al., p. 16.

26. William B. Osborne, "Information Operations: A New War-Fighting Capability," Air Force 2025 Research Paper (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: August 1996).

27. Sheila E. Widnall, and Ronald R. Fogelman, "Air Force Executive Guidance" (Washington: US Air Force, December 1995), pp. 2, 17.

28. Ibid.

29. US Department of the Army, STAR 21: Strategic Technologies for the Army of the 21st Century (Washington: National Academy Press, 1996), Introduction.

30. US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Concept of Employment for Unmanned Systems (Draft)," pp. 4, 11. See also, US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Unmanned System Future Capability (Working Draft)."

31. At one point, devices similar to the cruise missile were referred to as "robot bombers" rather than the now fashionable term Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV).

32. The flight was sponsored, in part, by the Department of the Navy. Tad McGeer and Juris Vagners, "An Unmanned Aircraft's Atlantic Flight," GPS World Magazine, June 1999, internet, http://www.gpsworld.com/0699/0699feat.html, accessed 2 March 2000. In 1995 students from the University of Texas at Arlington demonstrated an AAV that was able to autonomously takeoff from a designated area, locate and identify radioactive and biohazardous material represented by labeled barrels, map the location of each barrel, and return to its start point.

33. Michael Toscano, "Joint Robotics Program," slide presentation, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition & Technology), Strategic & Tactical Systems, Land Warfare, 24 August 1999, slide 13.

34. Ibid., p. 7.

35. Ronald C. Arkin and Tucker Balch, "Cooperative Multiagent Robotic Systems," Office of Mobile Robot Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga., undated, received March 2000.

36. "Just Right for Mini-Me: the Mini-Micro-PC," TIME Digital.

37. US Army Training and Doctrine Command, "Concept of Employment for Unmanned Systems," p. 12.

38. This problem is mentioned, almost in passing, on the web page for the Advanced Guidance Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, http://www.mn.afrl.af.mil/public/advguid.html, accessed 1 January 2001.

39. Susan I. Erwin, "Running Ships with Fewer Sailors," National Defense, March 2000, p. 16.

40. US Navy, "Smart Ship Project Assessment Report, " Commander, Naval Surface Force, US Atlantic Fleet, Norfolk, Va., 9 September 1997. See also, "`Smart Ship' Program Advances," MarineTalk website, 20 December 1999, internet, http://www.marinetalk.com/article/xxx00012222TU/, accessed 6 March 2001.

41. Charles Aldinger, "Remote-Control Warship Planned," Philadelphia Inquirer, 16 July 1996, p. 5.

42. See, for example, Raja Parasuraman, "Human-Computer Monitoring," Human Factors, 29 (1987), 695-706, and earlier (1981) work by C. D. Wickens and C. Kessel, "Failure Detection in Dynamic Systems," in Human Detection and Diagnosis of System Failures, ed. J. Rasmussen and W. B. Rouse (New York: Plenum, 1983).

43. Bill Hillaby, "Directed Energy Weapons Development and Potential," National Network News, 4 (July, 1997), 1, published by The Defense Associations National Network, Ottawa, Canada, internet, http://www.sfu.ca/~dann/nn4-3_12.htm, accessed 2 March 2001.

44. Jeffrey E. Thieret, et al., "Strategic Attack Systems Description," in Strategic Attack in 2025, Air Force 2025 Project (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University, 1996) ch. 3, internet, http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/volume3/chap06/v3c6-3.htm#Target Engagement System, accessed 9 March 2001.

45. "Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL)," news release BW0064, TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, Calif., 9 November 2000, internet, http://www.trw.com/thel/, accessed 12 December 2000. The US Army is also considering a Directed Energy Warfare Vehicle (DEW-V) concept. The DEW-V is a "virtual test bed" to determine the operational effectiveness of vehicle-mounted directed energy weapons for battle scenarios in 2015 and beyond. See Hillaby.

46. John T. Tatum, "A New Threat to Aircraft Survivability: Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapons," Aircraft Survivability, Fall 1995, p. 11.

47. Although no one expects these devices to completely replace conventional weapons, they have at least three advantages over conventional systems in addition to those already cited. First, some DEWs, especially the radio frequency type, have a higher probability of hit than projectiles. The spreading beam can irradiate the entire target, making accurate pointing and tracking much simpler. Second, the "ammunition" supply for these weapons is large compared to a typical store of conventional projectiles and missiles. This is especially true of aircraft, where weight is a critical consideration. Finally, DEWs are potentially much cheaper to support than conventional explosives. The traditional ammunition loading, fusing, and storage facility could be replaced by the "fuel" required to source the DEW. Additionally, some forms of DEWs, such as lasers and radio frequency weapons, can be used to produce nonlethal effects. See Tatum, p. 11.

48. The US Army and TRW Corporation have been using the High Energy Laser System Test Facility (HELSTF) for a joint tactical program with Israel called "Nautilus." The joint effort is evaluating lasers for use against short-range rockets, including the kind used with great effect against Israeli troops in South Lebanon and Russian forces in Chechnya. On 9 February 1996, lasers at HELSTF shot down their first armed and operational short-range rocket at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. In 1997, HELSTF conducted a successful live-fire test including the detection, tracking, and destruction of a short-range missile. The demonstration paved the way for further development in the form of the planned Tactical High-Energy Laser (THEL) system, a mobile ground-based air defense system for the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command. "Nautilus Fact Sheet," US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Huntsville, Ala., 1996. "Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL)" information sheet, TRW Corporation, Cleveland, Ohio. The same material may be found on the internet at http://www.trw.co.il/seg/sats/THEL.html, accessed 29 June 2000.

49. "Boeing Completes Testing of Tactical High Energy Laser," Defense Systems Daily, internet, http://defence-data.com/archive/page4222.htm, accessed 26 June 2000.

50. Ibid.

51. For a full discussion of netwar, see Stefan Eisen, Jr., "Netwar, It's Not Just for Hackers Anymore," document number ADA297897, Defense Technical Information Center, Ft. Belvoir, Va., 22 June 1995.

52. "Micro Air Vehicles," UK Defence Forum, March 1999, internet, http://www.ukdf.org.uk/ts6.html, accessed 13 March 2000.

53. Sandia National Laboratories, Intelligent Systems and Robotics Center, Miniature Autonomous Robotic Vehicle (MARV) webpage, http://www.sandia.gov/isrc/Capabilities/Prototyping/Small_Smart_Machines/MARV/marv.html, accessed 2 March 2000.

54. Ibid.

55. Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), Project 2025 (Norfolk, Va.: National Defense University, 6 May 1992), p. 36.

56. 2025 Concept, No. 900702, "Implanted Tactical Information Display," 2025 Concepts Database (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air War College, 1996).

Dr. Thomas K. Adams is a political-military strategist with more than 30 years of experience in all forms of military operations other than war, including counterguerrilla operations in Vietnam, humanitarian assistance in Haiti, counterdrug missions in South America, and peace operations in Bosnia. His recent publications include Special Operations and the Challenge of Unconventional Warfare (Cass, 1998) and "The Real Military Revolution," Parameters (Autumn 2000). His last operational military assignment was with the NATO stability force in Bosnia. A retired US Army lieutenant colonel, Adams holds a Ph.D. in political science from Syracuse University, an M.A. in international relations, an M.S.Sc. in social psychology, and a B.A. in liberal arts.

[Anti_Illuminati]

And this is one of the criminals that helped all of the above be possible, the official Chief Scientist of Ptech, who the U.S. refuses to extradite and arrest as an accomplice and direct facilitator of the 9/11 false flag:

http://iirme.com/bscsaudi/speakers


Dr. Hussein Ibrahim
Chairman
Horizons Software, Egypt

Dr. Hussein Ibrahim has more than 30 years of experience in business management, computer science research, and project leadership. Dr. Ibrahim oversees the overall professional services of Horizons Software in the areas of Enterprise Architecture, IT Strategy Development, Project Management Office Practices, and Business Intelligence Design. He advises customers in areas of business improvement management, and aligning business and IT strategies, as well as integrated E-Services architecture and design. Dr. Ibrahim taught computer science at Columbia University, where he also conducted research in the areas of parallel computer architecture and algorithms and computer vision. Dr. Ibrahim‘s experience extends over many years in US, Europe, and Middle East.