Aerospace and Defense eNewsletter
Volume 6 Issue 1 - March 2006
Information and Decision Superiority: Net-centricity
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Net-centricity (network centric warfare) is a crucial aspect of the U.S. military’s plan for transformation. It streamlines the information transfer sequence at the operational level by use of the power of connectivity. It enables vital relationships between organizations and people and accelerates decision-making.
Net-centricity’s underpinning is the Global Information Grid, an interconnected array of trusted and protected networks that circle the globe. The Grid is supported by associated processes and people to provide commanders with real-time information. Digitized and networked information reduces ambiguity and helps lift some of the “fog of war.” It provides both greater richness of information and improved reach. The immediacy of net-centricity creates an environment for a fully synchronized information campaign.
Traditionally, an enormous amount of information was fed through conventional channels. It was then slowly sifted, a long and labor-intensive task that delayed decision-making. As U.S. forces implement network centric methods, they gain the advantages of both speed and dexterity. These tools offer heightened battle-space awareness, time-sensitive precision targeting, and communications on the move. Information age warfare requires innovation that traverses three critical domains—the physical domain, the cognitive domain, and the information domain. An effective precision force carrying out joint operations is created at the intersection of the physical domain and the information domain. A heightened awareness of the battle-space occurs at the intersection of the information and cognitive domains. And time compression and disruption of an adversary’s ability to respond are created at the intersection of the physical and cognitive domains. Network centric warfare is situated in the heart of all three intersections.
Net-centricity is enabled by information superiority. It translates that superiority into battle-space dominance, linking noncontiguous friendly forces and providing self-synchronization, higher lethality, and greater survivability. By increasing the tempo of command decisions, net-centricity increases mission effectiveness; by continually crafting different operational realities, U.S. forces disrupt an adversary’s ability to respond.
Some proponents believe that net-centricity has not yet shown its full potential. Difficulties lie in the path of total implementation. Something of a culture change is necessary in order to embrace the concept of network centric warfare, and that change revolves around the issues of satisfying the right to know and the need to share information in organizations that historically have hesitated to let too many see too much. Yet, in order to be victorious all the members of the team must work together, and that means sharing information among services and with allies and partners. Once those changes occur, net-centricity will realize its full value at the strategic level as well.
The Department of Defense has shown its confidence in net-centricity by its levels of investment and procurement. It has deployed an enhanced land-based network and a new satellite constellation as part of its Transformational Communication Architecture, and it is extending communications reach from very large bandwidth ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems to the smallest tactical unit on the ground. To protect these vital cyber assets, DOD has procured a data tracking and analysis system that uses scanning and sensing products, insider threat technology that prevents the installation of malicious hardware and software by double agents, additional protections for the U.S. military’s classified network, and “honey nets” that draw adversaries away from its real networks and collect intelligence on their network attack methods.
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