Out of the info loop: why information networks are crucial to modern warfare

Reason, June, 2004 by Bryan Alexander

With this, The New Face of War completes its picture of I.O.'s lineage: asymmetrical threat analysis, OODA loops, and finally netwar. The past established, Berkowitz proceeds to patterns emerging in the present, describing information warfare's new concepts in terms of zapping, swarming, and network defense.

Zapping, more formally known as "precision destruction," occurs when the combination of networks and successful information looping allows one side to pinpoint specific targets, both human and inanimate. A case in point is the aforementioned prewarned destruction of selected Serbian buildings during the Kosovo war where carpet bombing became a thing of the past. Precision munitions--"smart weapons" equipped with advanced sensing and guidance technologies, such as laser tracking and thermal sensors--are an essential component of zapping, but they work well only within a secure and correct information network. Recall the inadvertent bombing of China's Belgrade embassy, which was purportedly caused by out-of-date maps.

Assassination, incidentally, falls into the zapping category. "The problem today," Berkowitz writes, "is that modern weapons are so accurate and modern intelligence and communications systems are so sophisticated that it often seems impossible not to target a particular person."

Swarming is a form of netwar in which multiple units suddenly converge on a surprised target. They sneak beneath enemy notice during the preparation for attack, then pounce. Berkowitz uses the example of Al Qaeda's 2000 attack on the USS Cole, in which a local cell was able to coordinate intelligence on American movements and their own small ships, agents, and explosives. Another example involves American operations in Afghanistan, where ad hoc teams of teams agents, Air Force bombers, satellites, and ground units would combine to swarm Taliban or Al Qaeda units.

Like zapping, swarming is available to any force with the network components. In their 2000 book Swarming and the Future of Conflict, Arquilla and Ronfeldt point to Mafia operations, globalization protesters, and historical examples from Napoleon to the Viet Cong and from "swarming Soviet anti-tank networks that played such a brilliant role in defeating the German blitzkrieg in the Battle of Kursk" to "fast-moving Zulu impi, capable of marching over 40 miles per day, [that] would break into small units as they went into the attack, surrounding their opponents and swiftly destroying their cohesion."

Network defense is exactly what it sounds like. In netwar situations, the security of networks becomes central. A truly devastating attack through network superiority alone is unlikely, Berkowitz argues, as the incomplete information assault in Kosovo demonstrates. An electronic Pearl Harbor would be too hard to control, too difficult to keep from blowing back on the operator, and too easily fixed. Instead, network command should supplement other forces. "Information warfare is rarely an end in itself," Berkowitz writes. "It is always a means to get ahead of your opponent so that you can destroy him, or leave him so cornered he will give up."