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Network-Centric Warfare
Naval War College Review, Wntr, 2001 by Edward A. Smith, Jr.
This is significant for several reasons. First, the Nimitz operation shows that using better equipment, organization, training, and information can shorten power-generation cycles and thus take advantage of network-centric speed and awareness. However, it also indicates that the time required for power generation varies with equipment, training, and organization; that in turn suggests that dissimilar military forces have power-generation cycles of radically different lengths. For example, the length of Nimitz's cycle would differ from that of a squad of SEALs (Navy special operations forces) inserted from a submarine, a cruiser firing Tomahawk land-attack missiles, a squad of Marines in a firefight, or bombers operating from bases in the continental United States.
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In a traditional battle, the commander manages the complex interaction among different combat cycles by so coordinating units that their respective "act" phases strike the enemy at the same time or in some prescribed sequence. The more diverse the forces, the greater the coordination problem. [10] The entire effort is held hostage to the speed of the slowest combat cycle, all other units being deliberately kept from achieving their optimum operational tempos so as to mass effects or be mutually supportive. This forgoes additional cycles that might have been applied by quicker-paced forces, and as a result, less power is applied overall (see figure 3). In short, by optimizing mass, we minimize efficiency.
Here is where agility becomes important. Precision and speed permit us to reduce cycle length and thereby increase the pace of operations, but they are insufficient by themselves to create a warfare revolution--or prevent it from backfiring. To deal with changes in the enemy threat or take advantage of emerging battlefield opportunities, we must be able both to conduct rapid, semi-independent operations and to mass forces and effects as required. We must be able to change the mode, direction, and objectives of our actions, just as much as we need to bring speed and precision to targeting.
This agility and the speed and precision it exploits all derive from the amalgam of information, sensors, and communications that constitutes the "information backplane" of network-centric operations. The network permits us to undertake more actions in a given time, to focus those actions better, and to act and react faster and with more certainty. Yet, these attributes--better, faster, more--still add up to little more than a more efficient form of attrition. How do we make the leap to a level of efficiency that would permit us to break enemies' wills rather than simply grind down their means of waging war?
EFFECTS-BASED OPERATIONS
While increasing the number of aim points struck, the volume of fire generated, or the damage inflicted remains a critical, irreducible core of what military forces do, it is only the first step toward combat efficiency. The real payoff in network-centric operations is foreshortening combat by causing the enemy to yield long before his means to resist have been exhausted, or long before additional friendly forces might be expected to arrive in the crisis area. This efficiency revolves around the ability of network-centric forces to undertake precise effects-based operations, that is, outcome-oriented activity focused on enemy behavior. The objective of these operations is psychological rather than physical. Hence, they are focused on the enemy's decision-making process and ability to take action in some coherent manner-especially "getting inside his OODA loop" and inducing or exploiting chaos. The knowledge, precision, speed, and agility brought by network-centric operations constitute the price of admission into this realm.
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