As important as a functioning government and a thriving economy are to a nation’s well-being, nothing is more important to the defense of freedom than an effective military. In this information age, all three sectors rely on networking to achieve success in their endeavors. For government, it involves keeping track of vital information and providing service to the citizen. For business, information technologies enable competitiveness through efficiency and productivity.
For the military, information technology is at the heart of the ongoing revolution in military affairs known as network-centric operations. Free World militaries around the globe are transforming their forces to operate in the network-centric arena. Across the board, the traditional late-20th-century model of heavy armor moved by sealift and supported by air power is being replaced by a lighter, more mobile force that boasts responsiveness and flexibility over mass and brute strength.
The Free World allies have made the commitment, and there is no turning back. Future operations featuring joint and coalition forces will be built around network-centric architectures.
Two reasons buttress this course of action. First, networking military forces enhances their effectiveness regardless of force structure. Projecting fancifully back a couple of millennia, imagine a typical Roman Empire army—armed with bows and arrows, swords and spears, with some warfighters mounted on horseback—being able to tap the advantages of network centricity. A commander could deploy his forces more effectively just by being able to know all aspects of the flow of battle in real time. His troops would need not be equipped with high-technology weaponry to respond quickly and decisively to changes on the battlefield. So, fast-forwarding 2,000 years to the present simply changes the setting for network centricity to act as a force multiplier.
The second reason is the proliferation of advanced information technologies. The very technologies that enable network centricity are spreading into each and every weapon system and platform. Soon, they will equip every individual in the battlespace. These technologies have gone beyond being force multipliers. They now define the force with their dramatically new capabilities.
The concept of sensor-to-shooter exemplifies this network-centric revolution. Technologies in use today permit ground-based forces to transmit global positioning system (GPS) attack coordinates to heavy bombers circling high overhead, where crews input the data into precision-guided munitions. When released, these munitions follow the satellite-based GPS signals to a pinpoint strike on their target on the Earth below. In this case, the nature of the ground troops, the activities of the airborne platform and the very definition of the weapon employed against the enemy are defined by network-centric technologies. Future systems will allow warfighters to move fused sensor data from a variety of different sources directly to platforms and even weapon systems for efficient employment against enemy targets.
Experts recognized long ago that exploiting fully the capabilities of network-centric warfare would require embedding new technologies in elements of the force. What these experts did not completely foresee was the exponential growth in capabilities that occurred as these technologies were introduced. New tactics, techniques and procedures are emerging even faster than information technologies shed generations.
The result is that network-centric operations will define all future conflicts. When two militaries come to fight in the battlespace, the force that takes advantage of network centricity best probably will prevail. In terms of warfare, any force that does not employ network-centric capabilities might as well be equipped with bows and arrows, swords and spears, for all the success it will have. In the case of network-centric operations, the medium is truly the message.
—The Editor
