Nine questions

Army, Feb 2003 by Sparrow, David A, Dion-Schwarz, Cynthia

The Army has undertaken the challenging task of transformation through innovation and collaboration. Although the stated goal is the Objective Force, learning how to transform by working together in the intellectual effort to create new responses to changing environments may be even more important to the future of the Army and our country. In creating the Objective Force, the Army needs to balance preserving those institutions and aspects of culture that make the Army what it is, while at the same time fostering and encouraging change to meet emerging challenges.

Because the world and our enemies are changing, the Army needs to continually adapt, even as specific operational goals and required capabilities evolve. Thus, sustaining debate, fostering thinking and encouraging innovation are among the most important tasks associated with pursuing the Objective Force. The Objective Force gives the uniformed and civilian Army something to work toward together, but it must be realized that there will be no clean end-state in equipping and training our future forces in the increasingly complex operational environment.

What now needs to be done is only incompletely understood. For a project as large and complex as the Objective Force, every echelon needs a vision of what it must do, and these visions must be consistent across echelons. Everyone-from the Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA) to the individual soldier or bench scientist who is going to make things happenneeds to know his or her purpose. At many levels, however, no vision exists which addresses, "What am I supposed to do to help reach the Objective Force?" Getting the questions right will allow the Army to pursue the Objective Force coherently in the face of uncertainty and to revise the objective of its pursuit in response to change.

To help the debate, we offer here our own list of questions. They are appropriate to a variety of echelons and a variety of specialties. Most focus on the greatly expanded role of information and information technologies. We suggest that the process of debating them within the wider Army com-munity will provoke thought and certainly generate better questions.

1. What does it mean to equip the forces with C41SR? If information is to become the armor of the future-if it is to provide the survivability that allows lightweight forces to be shock troops-then the problems presented by C^sup 4^ISR need to be treated with all the seriousness with which armor has traditionally been treated. Armor is not merely equipment, it is also a branch. If information provided by the Signal branch is the new armor enabling shock action, how do the relations among the branches change?

2. How will the Army demonstrate that the use of information leads to an effective force? In our view, the reason for employing any new military tool is force effectiveness, and by this standard the usefulness of programmed C^sup 4^ISR improvements remains unproven in experiments, exercises and combat. The centrality of information technologies to the current concept of the Objective Force suggests these technologies should be examined carefully before the Army becomes overly dependent upon them. The capabilities needed for testing these ideas appear to be incompletely understood. If current testing, demonstration and experimentation facilities are inadequate-be they modeling and simulation, human-inthe-loop or field exercises-then we are concerned that users and decision makers might not pursue the best new concepts.

3. What quality and quantity of information is needed for a commander to perform his mission or task? So far, evaluations of C^sup 4^ISR networks have focused on bytes and bandwidth rather than on quality metrics such as completeness, clarity and accuracy of the information. These quantities are more relevant to the warfighter, because they directly address the operational utility of the data.

What trade-offs need to be made between pushing information down the chain and the functionality of the force? Will too much information be a distraction to, say, a squad leader? C^sup 4^ISR is a tool: if it focuses attention away from the warfighter's job-seeking and destroying the enemy and occupying territory-then its employment can be counterproductive.

4. Can a robust C4ISR network be fielded using a block-upgrade approach to acquisitions? Because C^sup 4^ISR networks are systems and inherently interdependent, spiral development may not be the most expeditious approach to acquisition. It may not even be possible to use a block-upgrade approach for acquiring C^sup 4^ISR. An alternate acquisitions approach may need to be devised (such as fully equipping only a small portion of the force).

5. Do information technologies create ways to defeat an enemy without totally destroying his forces? If so, then few of the force-on-force metrics, such as loss exchange ratio, apply to models of this type of warfare. What new modeling & simulation capabilities will be needed to characterize and study these engagements? Is entitybased simulation, for instance, the best way to approach C^sup 4^ISR modeling or the modeling of other complex systems?