CIAO DATE: 05/02

Illuminating Tomorrow's War

Martin C. Libicki

Institute for National Strategic Studies
National Defense University

November 1999

Prologue

[The] information revolution is creating a Revolution in Military Affairs that will fundamentally change the way U.S. forces fight . . . [supported by a] "system of systems" that will give [United States forces] superior battlespace awareness. ¹

In the weeks leading up to Desert Storm, anxious analysts tried to forecast the course of war by counting what the coalition and Iraq each brought to the battlefield: they have this many men, we have that many men; they have this much armor, we have that much armor; their air fleet is this big; ours is that big. Few doubted which side would prevail in battle, but many analysts were not so sure the war could be won swiftly and with acceptable casualties.

Looking back, their worries seem baseless and their correlation of force calculations almost quaint. Indeed, the coalition may have carried the day almost as well with only half the forces. By the time the planes came back from Baghdad, Iraq was blind, but the coalition could see. That, plus precision weapons (and people trained to use them) determined the outcome. All else was detail. ²

The Gulf War suggested that the ability to see the battlespace is key to prevailing in conventional conflict when technology permits forces to hit and kill what they can see. This close relationship between seeing and striking may affect everything about conventional warfare: how it is fought, what forces and equipment it is fought with, and the role of the United States and others in fighting it.

To illuminate the battlespace, the Department of Defense (DOD) uses sensors (to yield ISR: intelligence surveillance, and reconnaissance) and networks (to support C⁴: command, control, communications, and computers). With precision weapons added, they collectively make up a "System of Systems." ³ Indeed, DOD is a System of Systems: its people deploy sensors, examine returns, maintain databases, create reports and maps, respond to orders and assignments, and designate targets for weapons. Rising complexity, a growing aversion to risk, the need for speed, constant cost pressures, and technological opportunities ⁴ all impel automatic integration of components at all levels from bits to knowledge. Otherwise, the vision of the battlespace remains a patchwork.

Integration offers the possibility of creating what has been called a Global Grid, referred to in this volume as the Grid. ⁵ It would be the glue of the "System of Systems," the means by which systems are linked and accessed, and a knowledge base — at a minimum, the common operational picture (COP) — built over and by a network. The Grid would "know" things in the sense that information (1) existed in some database, ⁶ (2) could be retrieved by content, and (3) was internally consistent across the Grid. Users on the Grid could be electronically connected to other warfighters and collaborate with them, can see a real-time map of the battlefield, annotate this map for others, find out where parts are in their repair cycle, participate in a simulation or exercise, assess the state of the network (and perhaps defend it from attack), diagnose remote equipment, and even perhaps call for fire support from certain weapons. Indeed, being continuously and intimately connected to the Grid may be second nature for tomorrow's forces.

This monograph explores some implications of and requirements for achieving battlespace illumination. Laced through this monograph are several themes: the ascendancy of light over power in arbitrating conflict, the sunset of platform-centric warfare in favor of Grid-centric warfare based on distributed sensors and weapons, the tension between the war that we would fight (e.g., standoff warfare) and the war our enemies may prefer, the need for a good mix between mission-oriented and user-oriented applications, and the need to keep the Grid open to change, and perhaps opened to others.

Those familiar with the debate over the revolution in military affairs (RMA) may find concepts in chapters 1 through 3 familiar, ⁷ and those thinking about information systems may respond similarly to chapters 4 and 5. Consolidating these strands of thought (and adding a few others) may broaden both the readership and the discussion of these issues.

Full Text (PDF format, 6.3M)

Notes

Note 1. Joseph P. Lorenz, Egypt and the New Arab Coafition, February 1989. Back

Note 2. John E. Endicott, Grand Strategy and the Pacific Region, May 1989. Back

Note 3. Eugene V. Rostow, President, Prime Minister, or Constitutional Monarch? October 1989. Back

Note 4. Howard G. DeWolf, SDI and Arms Control, November 1989. Back

Note 5. Martin C. Libicki, What Makes Industries Strategic, November 1989. Back

Note 6. Melvin A. Goodman, Gorbachev and Soviet Policy in the Third World, February 1990. Back

Note 7. John Van Oudenaren, "The Tradition of Change in Soviet Foreign Policy," and Francis Conte, "Two Schools of Soviet Diplomacy," in Understanding Soviet Foreign Policy, April 1990. Back