Dr Dan Kuehl
At a 1995 C4I conference held at the Naval
Postgraduate School, then-President of the National Defense University, Air Force
Lieutenant General Erv Rokke, said that the military professional military education (PME)
system was facing a challenge in how to integrate third wave warfare into the senior
military colleges' curricula. If information warfare (IW) was the "silver
bullet" of the future, how were we to arm our future graduates with this weapon? In a
broader strategic context, what are the problems, issues, and possible solutions for
national security in the information age? The focus of this chapter is twofold: to survey
how IW is being taught within the PME system, and to highlight some of the problem areas
this effort is encountering. Is the educational glass half full--are we making progress on
our effort to educate our future national security leadership--or is the glass half
empty--are we failing in this effort?
Why is it Necessary?
It is first necessary to define what this
article means by PME. This is the continuing education that nearly all military officers
undertake at certain career points. The intent is to further expand each officer's
knowledge and develop the intellectual capabilities necessary for successfully handling
greater responsibility. This is not training, and this article does not address training.
The differences between education and training may seem pedantic, and they are commonly
intermingled, but the differences are important. Learning how to fly an airplane or
operate a computer is training; analyzing the impact of the internet on international
relations, or assessing the relationship between IW and the revolution in military affairs
(RMA) is education. Training improves and adds to our skills, whereas education is focused
on the intellect. Our training programs, including those that concentrate on information
warfare, are world-class. Our educational programs and institutions are also, but they are
affected by a series of factors and forces that impact how well we are integrating IW into
our various PME curricula. A fair question to address up front is why incorporating IW
into our various PME programs is important. There are at least three reasons why this is
not just important, but critical.
- The "American Way of War"
in the 21st Century will revolve around it. The American vision for future
warfare is encapsulated by "Joint Vision 2010", which was officially promulgated
by General John Shalikashvili. JV 2010 presents a vision of warfare in which information
technology and information superiority provides the lenses through which military
capability and power are focused. The four operational concepts set forth by JV
2010--dominant maneuver, precision engagement, focused logistics and full dimensional
protection--rest on a base of information superiority. Its follow-on publication,
"Expanding JV 2010", devotes two of its five major chapters to information
superiority and joint operations in the information age. We need to study IW because this
is the way we will fight in the future.
- The contents of our PME curricula need
it. A recent report on PME by the Center for Strategic and International Studies argued
that the information revolution is transforming global economics, international politics,
and warfare. The DOD and the armed forces are struggling to come to grips with the meaning
and impact of these trends. The forces set in motion by the information revolution are
enormous and powerful, generating fundamental changes in how military force and national
power can be employed, yet they are imperfectly understood. We must incorporate these
issues into our different curricula.
- The global impact of the information
revolution is transforming our understanding of what constitutes national security and
the processes we undertake to attain it. How will the emergence of a new operational
environment--cyberspace--impact and interrelate with operations in the other environments?
How will digital convergence--the ability to turn almost any form of information into ones
and zeros--influence intelligence, command and control, targeting, and other critical
military functions, let alone economics or politics? How will the explosion in
connectivity--the omnilinking of the electronic digitized world--impact and change how
individuals, organizations, countries, and even cultures interact in an increasingly
virtual world in which traditional boundaries and borders become less effective and have
at times diminished relevance. This is not the future, because we're operating in this
environment today, and our future military leaders need to be educated for this world.
This is more than information technology in the service of "blast, heat, and
fragmentation", but information as an environment in itself.
This article will address PME at three
different levels, senior, intermediate, and special. Senior students at the war colleges
are generally lieutenant colonels/navy commanders (or their civilian equivalents), with a
small number of full colonels/navy captains. The intermediate students at the staff
colleges are generally majors/navy lieutenant commanders, while other programs can run the
full gamut of ranks, from senior enlisted to general officer programs, aimed at special
audiences or communities.
Senior PME
The Joint Staff in J-7, which is
responsible for education and doctrine, along with other functions, develops the
fundamental guidance for senior PME. In each of the past few years the Military Education
Coordinating Committee (MECC) has declared Information Warfare/Information Operations to
be a "special area of emphasis", along with more than a dozen other functional
or special issues ranging from strategic deterrence to peace operations. A review of the
draft 1998 Officer PME Policy document--Chairman of the JCS Instruction 1800.1, also known
as the "OPMEP"--indicates that at the Service colleges (Air, Army, Navy and
Marine Corps War Colleges) and at the two joint programs at National Defense University
(National War College and Industrial College of the Armed Forces) the information
component of national power is considered to be a specific area of study. The curricula
include a learning area focusing on "Systems Integration in the 21st
Century Battlespace", heavily influenced by information technology. It will be useful
to briefly survey how IW is covered at each of the senior colleges, starting with the four
Service-connected institutions.
The small (twelve students) Marine Corps
War College at Quantico does not devote any direct curriculum coverage to information
warfare. This is consistent with the Corps' argument that it does not conduct IW, but
rather focuses on "command dominance" at the tactical and operational level. If
Marine Corps forces need IW assistance they will obtain it from other entities such as the
Joint Command and Control Warfare Center or the Navy's Fleet Information Warfare Center.
The Navy War College's senior program, in the College of Naval Warfare, is both technical
and traditional in that its treatment of information is heavily focused on command,
control and communications, the traditional elements of C3, along with intelligence. There
is little if any overt coverage of information warfare in the core curriculum, and
information technology and the information revolution come into play solely as adjuncts to
more traditional aspects of military strategy and operations. There is an elective course
offered on "C2, Battlespace Information, and Systems Integration", and another
course on "Information Warfare: State of the Art", but these can reach only a
very limited number of students. The Army War College core curriculum does devote one day
to Information Operations. This year (1998) that session featured presentations by the
Director of the National Security Agency, Lieutenant General (USAF) Ken Minihan, and by
the Commander of the Combined Arms Command, Lieutenant General (Army) Montgomery Meigs,
who discussed his experiences with information operations in the Balkans. The curriculum
also includes an elective course on IW, taught by the NSA representative on the faculty,
but as at Newport, this course can reach only a very limited number of students, probably
no more than about a dozen. The focus of the curriculum is on the role of information
technology in intelligence and land warfare. The Air War College has incorporated the
greatest amount of IW-related material into its curriculum of any of the four Service
colleges, probably because of the presence on the faculty of Dr George Stein, a recognized
expert in the field. In the "Conflict and Change" segment of the curriculum,
which is the first segment the students take at the start of the academic program,
activities include lectures, seminars, and a wargame that explores the impact of the
information age on national security. Additionally, in the "Joint Force
Employment" segment of the curriculum one session is devoted to Information
Operations. There is also one elective course devoted to IW.
The picture that emerges from this survey
of the four Service colleges is that Information Warfare is most often treated as a
distinct niche topic, then essentially ignored in the pursuit of more traditional
subjects. There is no sense, except at the Air War College, of the possibility that the
information revolution is transforming the global conduct of politics or economics. The
situation is somewhat better at the two schools at the National Defense University,
National War College and the ICAF, perhaps because they are not directly tied to any form
or mode of warfare or to any specific Service. At NDU, IW is slowly working its way into
the core curricula, although in varying degrees. The ICAF curricula clearly considers
information to be a distinct element of national power, synergistically related to the
other elements, and a variety of the "industry studies" which are central to the
ICAF program are directly tied to information age technologies, such as electronics and
telecommunications. The National War College is more focused on the RMA, and considers the
information revolution primarily as both an element and driver of that process. For the
past two years National War College has been engaged in an in-depth exploration called
"An Inquiry into the Future of Conflict", and information warfare is an element
of this effort. Yet the term "information age" is frequently prefaced with the
caveat "so-called", which highlights the caution and at times skepticism with
which the subjects of the information revolution and information warfare are approached.
At both schools, however, the primary means of discussing IW in the core curricula is via
guest speakers such as General Minihan or Admiral Art Cebroski, the former JCS/J-6. When
students go from those sessions into their seminars, which is the primary pedagogical
method at all senior PME programs, the resident faculty leader likely has little if any
background in or knowledge of IW, and their personal opinions of IW range from espousal to
denial. In 1995 National War College held an IW day in which the seminars concentrated on
IW, but that has not been repeated. Both colleges have an extensive series of elective
course offerings, many of which do in fact pertain to IW/IO and the larger impact of the
information age on the national security paradigm.
NDU also has two other programs that factor
heavily in its ability to address the impact of the information age on national security.
The Information Resources Management College (IRMC) has the impact of the information
revolution and advanced information technology as its basic focus. Although senior PME is
not its raison d 'etre--business and management employing advanced information
technology is its forte--IRMC offers a wide range of elective courses open to the students
at National War College and ICAF, and in Academic Year '98 over 300 students from those
schools took courses at IRMC. Embedded within IRMC is another program, however, that does
focus explicitly on IW and the employment of the information component of national power
in national security affairs. This is the School of Information Warfare and Strategy, or
SIWS.
In 1993 IRMC organized a department to
examine how information technology was changing war. The "Information Based
Warfare" department began by organizing several seminars and short, intensive
courses, and in the fall semester of that year offered the first IW elective for National
War College and ICAF students. In the spring of 1994 General Shalikashvili, Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, approved the proposal of Lieutenant General (Army) Paul Cerjan
to create a school to study IW, and the Chairman directed the implementation of a two-year
pilot program at NDU to explore IW and the role of information in national security. Based
on the "realization that the potential of information as a decisive element of
national power" was an unmistakable lesson of the Persian Gulf War, the new program
was a full ten month immersion in national security from the unique perspective of the
information age. During its tenure this program enabled 48 students--16 the first year, 32
the second--to explore in depth a very wide range of issues involving national security in
the information age. The curriculum featured well over 400 hours of faculty-student
contact hours in classroom instruction. The mix of students was almost evenly balanced
between military (28) and government civilians (20), which made for a rich interagency
learning environment. From diplomacy to global economics, warfighting to digital privacy,
reengineering the DOD to the impact of complexity theory and non-linearity, the curriculum
of this program challenged students to explore concepts and think "outside the
box" of traditional approaches. The curriculum covered much of the same material and
concepts as the other senior PME programs, but always from the perspective of the
information age and its current and potential impact on national security.
Needless to say, there were supporters and
there were doubters, and the program did not enjoy universal acceptance. Some opposition
came from bureaucratic and organizational perspectives, because students in this program
came at the expense of other programs, and impacted the resources available to other
institutions. Some opposition had an intellectual basis, because the subject of IW was new
and unproven, and some thought that this effort was being rushed into practice because of
a misplaced fascination with technology. Some concerns stemmed from the relatively small
number of students being exposed to the concepts in the curriculum. Lieutenant General
(Air Force) Erv Rokke, who became President of the National Defense University in
mid-1994, stated that the IW effort was "too important to reserve for a small student
body", and after the second class of the ten month program graduated in June 1996 the
program was significantly changed. The ten month effort was declared a success,
terminated, and a new program, called the "Information Strategies Concentration
Program" (ISCP) was initiated. The ISCP features a three tiered approach. The SIWS
faculty--never more than half a dozen people--is a key element in the effort to migrate
information age concepts and issues into the core curricula at the other NDU schools and
indeed to the DOD at large. As a part of the effort to reach more students, the SIWS
faculty began developing a larger range of elective courses available to the NDU student
population. Some of the elective courses taught at National War College or the ICAF
involve SIWS faculty, and in AY 98 two ICAF courses were co-taught with SIWS faculty. For
AY 99 National War College has invited one of the SIWS faculty to participate fully in the
development and teaching of one of the college's core courses, "Fundamentals of
Military Thought and Strategy", which will increase the influx of IW-related concepts
into their curriculum. Finally, the ISCP incorporated a new program that offered what
amount to a "minor" in information strategy to students at the National War
College and the ICAF, a program built upon the material presented in the core curricula at
their respective colleges. In the ISCP's two years over 110 students have completed this
program. The price for reaching a much larger number of students, however, is that their
educational immersion in the material simply is not as deep. The ISCP comprises less than
100 hours of curriculum, compared to the 400+ hours in the ten month program. The question
still remains whether this is sufficient to adequately explore the paradigm shift of
national security in the information age. In any event, the ISCP at IRMC/SIWS remains the
single most focused and concentrated PME program that examines the strategic impact of IW
and the information revolution on the evolving national security paradigm in the 21st
Century…nothing else in the DOD even comes close.
Intermediate PME
The various Service staff colleges and
intermediate PME programs also address IW and the information revolution, but to differing
degrees. At the Army, Navy and Marine Corps staff colleges IW is treated as another
element in the theater campaign planning process, although some excellent work is being
done there. At Quantico, for example, the Marine Command and Staff College curriculum is
increasing its coverage of this topic, and is going to incorporate the one-day IW planning
exercise that they do with SIWS faculty support into other aspects of the curriculum,
which will broaden and embed the topic more firmly. Other aspects of their curriculum also
examine other information-related issues. The core curriculum includes a segment on media
operations, a topic related to information operations and heavily influenced by the global
information revolution. The Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell AFB is perhaps the
most visionary of the different intermediate level schools, and its students have over the
past few years produced some absolutely first-rate research into IW and related issues.
Three of the Services (Army, Air Force and Marine Corps) have established select follow-on
programs that immerse a small number of students (about twenty) in a second year's
exploration of warfare at the operational and strategic level. While IW is not a central
part of these school's curricula, many of their students have written theses of such
intellectual depth and quality that they are used as texts at the senior programs, and the
number of these dealing with IW is growing.
The keystone of the Navy's IW educational
effort is its unique Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) at Monterey, which is to intermediate
IW education what SIWS is to senior. In 1995 the NPS recast and expanded its electronic
warfare curriculum into an IW mold. This very extensive and technically-demanding program
is heavily based on science and technology. The IW curriculum matrix features repeated
doses of physics, programming and calculus, all of which produce graduates at the leading
edge of technology. Although the program is certainly not for everyone, and its emphasis
perhaps underemphasizes the non-technical and human aspects of information operations in
favor of the hard sciences, it is the DOD's finest program in IW technology. The body of
research already available from NPS students is extensive and of the highest quality.
Other Programs
The Service Academies all offer extensive
coursework in computer science and the employment of new information technologies. This is
not the same as IW, but it provides a technological foundation upon which to build
capability and understanding, and the Air Force Academy has developed an elective course
that examines IW and IO within the framework of air warfare. National Defense University
operates several programs at the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk that incorporate
IW. Since graduates of the Services' senior and intermediate PME schools are not fully
accredited as joint specialty officers, AFSC offers programs for those graduates, and IW
has been included in those curricula. It also offers a three week IW course intended for
personnel serving in IW-related positions on operational staffs. Air University's College
for Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education (CADRE) has developed an extensive series
of IW courses that range from awareness to application, and attendees range from junior
enlisted to general officers. The Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey has opened a new
Center for Information Operations and Sciences, and recently held its initial offering of
a Senior Honors Program for senior managers and flag officers. As one might expect,
intelligence schools and programs are active in this area, and the Joint Military
Intelligence Training Center offers a one week intensive course in IW several times a
year. At NDU, IRMC and the SIWS offer a variety of courses and programs that explore
different aspects of the information revolution, ranging from intensive courses in IW to
an extensive certificate program for federal Chief Information Officers. The return of the
SIWS program to IRMC in February 1998 will result in a broader mix of courses and a wider
student audience. While it also holds the danger of diffusing the effort at the senior PME
level, the intent is clearly there to increase the exposure of IW across a broader range
of educational programs.
Problem Areas
The preceding discussion might very well
appear as though the answer to the opening question "Is the glass half full or half
empty?" is that the glass is indeed half full, yet that might be too optimistic an
answer, because the DOD IW education effort faces some serious and troubling difficulties
that a too-quick glance at course titles and curriculum descriptions might paper over.
Four issues in particular are generating problems.
- Terminology: SIWS is now in its
fourth year, and each year has essentially seen a new "official" DOD definition
of IW. At the very first meeting of the initial SIWS class (August 1994) the faculty
presented the range of IW definitions. After being exposed to multiple interpretations of
IW the students justifiably asked "how can you teach this if you can't define
it?" The fact that the official definition of IW is still evolving is in some ways
understandable because of the newness of the discipline, which is why the definition of
information warfare has undergone frequent change and revision. For some, this lack of
consistency causes skepticism and hurts the credibility of IW, while others argue that the
discipline is so evolutionary, and the technology changing so quickly, that to impose a
"carved in stone" definition on the entire IW community would be
counterproductive, quickly become obsolete, and would constrain new thinking and the
development of new concepts. Another aspect of this is the argument that the content and
scope of the official DOD definitions of IW have grown muddled and imprecise, too vague to
be useful in explaining to the uncertain what IW really is. The current definition of IW,
for example, promulgated by DOD Directive 3600.1, tells the reader that IW is conducted
against a specific adversary/adversaries during crisis or conflict. It says nothing about
what IW is, why or how it is conducted, what the hoped for results are, or any similar
clarifying information. Unless one knows what information operations are, one cannot
comprehend information warfare. The IW community needs a solid, conceptually consistent
and comprehensive definition of IW that clearly and forthrightly explains to the
uninitiated what IW is.
- The "Geek Factor": The
IW effort is bedeviled in the operational military by the widespread perception that
"only a geek" does IW. The "geek factor" is strong and its impact on
the educational effort is debilitating. Many officers in PME programs look surprised at
the suggestion that they should be interested in IW, and indicate that their lack of
interest is because "I'm not a communications, signals, intelligence, computers,
etc" specialist. This stems from their belief that IW is only for those in a narrow
area of technical expertise. Additionally, as alluded to previously, many faculty members
remain skeptical of the "so-called information revolution". We must remember
that technology provides only two of the three critical elements of IW--information
systems hardware, and computer software--and that the third critical factor--the
"wetware" of the human brain--provides perhaps the ultimate target for IW.
- Curriculum: The curricula at all
the PME schools, at all levels, do not lack for viable subject matter. In fact, just the
opposite is true, and the amount of important subject material far exceeds the amount of
time that can reasonably be devoted to it. Any course or program manager will justifiably
ask "what content do you want me to cut in order to add IW?" From a bureaucratic
or human dimension, the faculty member or program that you recommended diminishing just
became your enemy and an opponent of IW. At most schools the focus is on C3 technology,
intelligence, or a narrow emphasis on C2W and information technology in warfare. Only in
insolated segments do curricula touch on the broader and more uncertain issues surrounding
the potential impact of the information age on the national security environment, and none
of the schools takes as its primary theme the global strategic impact of the information
revolution. Only the SIWS ten-month program did that, and it is now gone, unlikely to
return. A microcosm of this lack of emphasis can be seen in a multi-school exercise that
takes place each April in a week-long theater level wargame called the "Joint
Land-Air-Sea Simulation" (JLASS) conducted at the Air Force Wargaming Institute at
Air University. For the past several years the NDU students participating in the exercise
(about thirty) have formed the "Red Team" and play against the U.S. or
"blue" side. For each of the past three years the NDU contingent included a few
students from SIWS, and the Red campaign plans have included a healthy dose of IW at all
levels, from strategic to tactical. The impact on the course of the game has varied,
because the faculty participants from the "blue" schools simply do not know how
to integrate the IW results into the course of the simulation, nor does the
"blue" campaign plan take IW into account, not even defensively. As a result,
the "red" campaign has inflicted severe information effects onto
"blue". Some would argue that the exercise, by essentially ignoring IW, mirrors
those schools' curricula and may set the stage for a real world failure by training the
participants to expect an unrealistically benign information environment. Nonetheless,
this year's exercise (1998) goes on as before.
- Wanted--A Champion: A final and
critical problem area for the IW educational effort is the lack of a vocal and visible
sponsor for such education: a champion that will espouse the need for such education and
call for its expansion and strengthening. Who should be the champion? The CINCs and actual
operational users? The Services, charged with the legal responsibility to "organize,
train and equip" forces for employment? The Joint or OSD staff? The recent creation
of a dedicated Information Operations position under the Assistant Secretary of
Defense/C3I is a good step, and that element would be a logical DOD champion for IW. In
the face of resource limitations, budget cuts, fewer students, a finite number of
curriculum hours, resistance to change, and a host of other difficulties, however, who
will provide the strong support for IW education? Even the development of new programs
such as the one that SIWS and IRMC are crafting does not lessen the need for a strong
external voice to support and back this effort. Without it, the DOD educational effort
will continue to swim upstream.
Conclusion
We return to the question with which this
piece opened: is the IW educational glass half full, or half empty? On the positive side,
there are classes and courses on IW at virtually every intermediate and senior PME school,
and the awareness and educational programs already underway at other educational
organizations are broadening the military's understanding of IW, at least in an
operational sense. The SIWS program remains active, but in a more diffuse and thinner
version than its pilot program. On the negative side, there are obstacles that limit the
breadth, depth, content, and effectiveness of the IW educational effort, and until they
are solved or alleviated the overall effort will sputter. The DOD has made a start, but
has an equally long way to go to reach the level of exploration and depth of thinking that
is necessary to adequately examine the paradigm of national security in the information
age. The glass is half full, but barely, and it may be leaking.
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