Decision navigation: coping with 21st-century challenges in tactical decisionmaking

Military Review, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Dennis T. Gyllensporre

* The surgical-warfare image introduced during Operation Desert Storm cultivated values and nourished the belief that only minimal casualties are acceptable.

* The increased requirement to operate in joint and multinational environments reduces the commander's capability to fully anticipate the effects of decisions in all parts of the organization and calls for enhanced systems thinking.

This list identifies important challenges, but it does not tell us how to overcome them. The futurists Alvin Toffler and Heidi Toffler argue that the next generation of warfare will be based on values and perceptions developed in the Information Age society. (7) The transition that has begun will be the most profound of all military revolutions. (8) We recognize this change as a revolution in military affairs (RMA).

Although many authors credit Operation Desert Storm with defining the next generation of warfare, U.S. Navy Admiral Bill Owens, one of the first to note that an RMA is occurring, argues that, although some important technological elements were present on the battlefield, Operation Desert Storm was waged with Industrial Age methods. (9) Author Max Boot claims that operations in Afghanistan and Iraq showed the new American way of war. (10) The changes we anticipate as a new generation of warfare emerges are perhaps best understood by examining changes in underlying paradigms.

Moving beyond the Newtonian paradigm. By defining time and space as absolute and explaining the universe with a "majestic clockwork" metaphor, the British physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton made people understand its orderly and predictable nature. (11) The Newtonian model became a foundation of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution and embedded in Western philosophy as a paradigm. (12) Virtually all scientists and theorists have followed Newton's banner--some aware of the paradigm, some not. (13) Using the Newtonian model, planners identified optimal solutions by dividing problems into manageable subproblems and applying appropriate tools. They constructed a grand design to solve complex problems by putting all the subsolutions together.

Military professionals and others have written an immense number of articles arguing for improved decisionmaking. Joint Vision 2020 (JV 2020) recognizes the need for improved decisionmaking by outlining "decision superiority," making and implementing better decisions faster than the enemy can react. (14) However, JV 2020 does not explain how to make decisionmaking successful. A revolution in military affairs suggests a fundamental change in all aspects of warfare. (15) The transition to the Information Age is associated with a paradigm shift. Thus, the search for improved decisionmaking originates in a new post-Newtonian paradigm.

Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle exposed flaws in Newton's paradigm early in the 20th century. (16) Today, we know that Newton's laws do not completely explain how nature behaves. Yet, in military decisionmaking and in other fields, we remain committed to Newton's majestic clockwork. German military strategist Carl von Clausewitz pioneered the post-Newton paradigm in military affairs by formulating the concept of friction, which tells us that we cannot foresee all circumstances: "Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper." (17) Post-Newtonian thought recognizes uncertainty and complexity as natural in time-constrained environments and moves away from methods that aim for perfect knowledge. According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the more precisely the position of an object is determined, the less precisely its momentum is known at that instant, and vice versa. This tells us that the commander must balance the need for precision in information with the need for its timeliness.