Network-Centric Warfare

Naval War College Review, Wntr, 2001 by Edward A. Smith, Jr.

NOTES

(1.) Observe, Orient, Decide, Act--a cycle used by Colonel John R. Boyd, U.S. Air Force, to characterize fighter engagements and since then applied to the decision-making process in general. See John R. Boyd, A Discourse on Winning and Losing (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air Univ. Press, August 1987).

(2.) Walter Morrow, "Technology for a Naval Revolution in Military Affairs," Second Navy RMA Round Table, Science Applications International Corporation, Tysons Corner, Virginia, 4 June 1997.

(3.) Ibid.

(4.) 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 $700,000 in 1998, to possibly S300,000 or less before the decade is out--a roughly 50 percent drop every ten years. Daniel Murphy [Rear Adm., USN], "Surface Warfare," Navy RMA Round Table.

(5.) The situation is analogous to the triple revolution in guns, armor, and propulsion that marked warship design between 1862 and 1910--that is, from the commissioning of the USS Monitor to the first launch of an aircraft from a U.S. Navy ship. That three fold advance induced a period of trial and error that produced in turn such rapid change in warship design that new units were obsolete within a few years of entering service. It also brought forth Alfred Thayer Mahan and a fundamental rethinking of what navies could do.

(6.) Boyd.

(7.) In Boyd's tactical engagement loop, "orient" and "decide" are separated into two phases; however, this distinction becomes problematic in more complex operations, especially at the operational and strategic levels of war. As used here, the "orient" and "decide" phases are considered together, as collectively defining the time necessary to generate the right force to achieve the right effects.

(8.) The results of the Nimitz demonstration are detailed in a two-volume CNA study: Angelyn Jewell et al., USS Nimitz and Carrier Airwing Surge Demonstration (Alexandria, Va.: Center for Naval Analyses, 1998).

(9.) In the Nimitz case, the air wing was composed of low-maintenance, quick-turnaround F/A-18s, which could readily fly five or more sorties per day. The carrier air wing started with intense "flex-deck" operations but soon discovered that the flight deck became unworkable; the "edge of chaos" had been reached. It therefore switched to an aggressive concept of cyclical operations that enabled the wing to launch more aircraft while maintaining better order on the flight deck. Inter view with Rear Adm. John Nathman, USN, Commander, Nimitz Battle Group, Pentagon, 11 February 1999.

(10.) The problem is especially bad in coalition operations, governed as they are by multiple national rules of engagement.

(11.) For the Japanese decision process and force-generation cycle at Midway, see Dallas W. Isom, "The Battle of Midway: Why the Japanese Lost," Naval War College Review, Summer 2000, pp. 60-100, esp. pp. 72ff.

(12.) In the Midway example, because the U.S. and Japanese forces were very alike, their OODA cycles would have been roughly similar. In a conflict between two dissimilar forces, that would not be the case, making the adversary's OODA cycle much more difficult to predict.