Network-Centric Warfare

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

(13.) However good the surveillance picture or "battlespace awareness" we generate, the ultimate determinant of the speed and direction of the enemy decision-making cycle is the enemy. Sufficiently fine-grained knowledge of the enemy arises not from sensor data but from analysis based in large part on human-intelligence reporting--which is necessarily sporadic. We cannot, therefore, depend on having the intelligence when we need it or, indeed, on collecting the needed data at all.

(14.) 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.

(15.) The idea of inducing chaos will hardly be a new concept to ground forces, for whom the fundamental challenge is to control very large numbers of "actors" in battle. In the ground context, "breaking the enemy's will to resist" equates to causing the enemy to disintegrate into panicked flight. While this understanding remains operative, the focus of the chaos sought here lies at the operational, even the strategic, level rather than the battlefield.

(16.) Barry Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War (Washington, D.C.: National Defense Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 105ff.

(17.) Major Glenn James, U.S. Air Force, uses the example of a water faucet that drips with annoying regularity. As the flow of water is increased, the frequency of the drip rises but the regularity remains. However, when the flow is quickened 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. Glenn James, Chaos Theory: The Essentials for Military Applications, Newport Paper 10 (Newport, R.I.: Naval War College, 1997), pp. 15-6.

(18.) It is worth making a distinction here between tactical-level chaos that induces the enemy to take flight and strategic-level chaos that induces irrational behavior by a power with nuclear weapons. Between these two extremes lies a realm in which "shock and awe" can achieve specific effects calculated to support political and military objectives. However, implicit in the idea of effects is a risk-versus-gain calculus that applies to chaos as much as to other effects.

(19.) In the strategic nuclear confrontation of the Cold War, it was necessary to operate in this zone of order to avoid the risk of an irrational act or an uncontrolled escalation.

(20.) An example arose in the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The Egyptian army's "edge of chaos" was far inside that of the Israelis. Therefore, the Egyptians were forced to resort to a scripted preemptive campaign. That gave them an initial success in crossing the Suez Canal but left them largely incapable of responding to Israeli counteraction.

(21.) The two fleets took more than three hours to close. This allowed ample time for the commanders to observe the enemy line and any gaps in it that they might exploit. The cerebral networking provided a common understanding of how such gaps might be exploited and of how ships might provide mutual support and exploit any further opportunities.