during which the U.S. military and associated national defense

organizations identified Information Warfare as a conceptual vehicle

for transitioning from the precepts of the Cold War into the new

global realities of the Information Age. The concept is gaining momentum

throughout the national security community at a breakneck

pace.

Information Warfare’s already strong institutional influence is readily

evident in the spate of military and other national security organizations

which have taken it on as a key element of their mission responsibilities

or, as in a growing number of cases, which have been explicitly created

to advance and pursue the concept. Simultaneously, millions of dollars are

being programmed to provide new data bases, network architectures,

advanced software, and other sophisticated capabilities all under the rubric

of Information Warfare.

Also by now, most major military organizations have specially selected

some of their best minds to help them define and address the

new intellectual, organizational, programmatic, and technological

quickly and heavily come on board, seeing the concept to present a

legitimate need and therefore also a business opportunity for bringing

new, innovative mixes of its expertise to bear on post–Cold War

problems. Throughout the national security community, belief in

and enthusiasm for the concept seem to grow by the day as a key to

coping with the ever accelerating changes that have continued to beset

it since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The following extended quote from the Secretary of Defense’s 1994

report to the President and the Congress summarizes the compelling

logic which undergirds this enthusiasm while also testifying to the

broad acceptance which the concept seems to enjoy at the highest

Information Warfare is a means to not only better integrate C4I (Command, Control,

Communications, Computers, and Intelligence), but also to address the comparative effectiveness

of a potential adversary’s C4I. It consists of the actions taken to preserve the integrity of one’s

own information systems from exploitation, corruption, or destruction while at the same time

exploiting, corrupting, or destroying an adversary’s information system and, in the process,

achieving information advantage in the application of force. Thus, Information Warfare is an

aggregation of and better integration of C4, C4 countermeasures, information systems security and

security countermeasures, and intelligence.

Information Warfare provides a method of better organizing and coordinating efforts to ensure an

optimized information system responsive to the very demanding information requirements inherent

in a smaller force structure, a rapid response capability, and advancing military technologies such as

deep strike and precision guided weapons and enhanced mobility of forces. Information

Warfare is an integrating strategy that makes better use of resources to provide for a better

informed force—a force that can act more decisively increasing the likelihood of success while

minimizing casualties and collateral effects.1

Certainly, if the first milestone for achieving a U.S. Information

Warfare capacity suitable for the early decades of the coming century

must be development of policy and resource support for the concept

throughout the breadth and depth of the national security establishment,

that objective now seems to be fairly well secured. The

concept’s impressive thrust within the national security community

has accelerated to the point where most briefings and discussions of

the concept now acknowledge Information Warfare to constitute a

new medium of conflict even beyond the military dimension to include

new modes of global economic, political, and even cultural

generalities of the DoD Annual Report and Claims that it is a new

form of global competition for the Information age? The Information

Warfare concept’s policy and institutional thrust seems to be fairly

well established. Now the challenge is to address the intellectually

even more difficult issues of its vector.

Thus far, the specifics of the concept’s achieved thrust have focused

primarily upon organization, process, and resource issues—i.e., essentially

the means of Information Warfare. But, beyond the

generalities of the DoD Annual Report and claims of the concept’s

relevance as a new ubiquitous form of Information Age competition

and now well established military objectives of countering enemy

command and control while protecting your own, the objectives of

Information Warfare remain relatively undefined. And, with the

concept’s objectives undefined, its potential implications also suffer

from underdefinition and, therefore, lack of examination.

Much of this tendency to shy away from difficult definitions of conceptual

objectives has to do with the traditional American intellectual

style which is one of pronounced pragmatism. The American

institutions generally—and the American military particularly—are

decidedly more comfortable with process than with theory, with action

more than reflection, with efficiencies more than effectiveness

(there is often a difference), with particular performance than with

general coherence, and with the particular more than with the holistic.

This inclines the U.S. military, along with many other American institutions,

to reduce general propositions such as Information Warfare

as quickly as possible to specific "means" issues—i.e., essentially

those of resources, organization, and process—with relatively less attention

paid to the more general concerns associated with objectives

and the more integrated, more coherent address that such concerns

demand. Traditional American resource management tools—

including the DoD Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System

reflect and reinforce these tendencies.

While this especially American style proves its practical mettle over

and over in dealing effectively with specific problems, it has definite

weaknesses in its capacity to treat several problems at once in context

with each other. Unfortunately, it is exactly this sort of integrated,

contextual address that an idea as complex and far-reaching

as Information Warfare demands. Today, it is far from certain that

the structure of institutional relationships and processes through

which the U.S. Government manages the country’s global security

affairs—the PPBS, service department and joint service doctrinal and

organizational relationships, the functional junctures of military and

civil infrastructures, to name just a few—can cope with Information

Warfare in all of the dimensions and manifestations that the concept’s

Today, when one reads about Information Warfare and hears about

the concept in presentations, it remains very difficult to determine if

there is anything that Information Warfare is not. A skeptical mind is

soon prompted to ask, "If Information Warfare is everything, can it be

anything?"

Several other questions might follow. For example: Is, as some of its

harsher critics suspect, the concept primarily of a bureaucratic and

resources thrust toward specific means with little intellectual vector

toward specific objectives? Is it truly a trend or merely "trend surfing"?

Might not the concept be fundamentally flawed intellectually

in constituting, as it does, an attempt to explicitly address phenomena

(those of information) which are implicit to all human endeavor,

including warfighting? Is there a risk that Information Warfare could

become a convenient lip-service repository for all of the difficult issues

of post–Cold War relevance for a national security structure and

military whose general forms and culture remain rooted in Cold War

precepts? ("Sure, we’re relevant in the new era, we subscribe to Information

Warfare.")

And, more specifically: If Information Warfare holds that all or most

information is valuable and targetable but that it also must be accessible

and readily "fungible," what are the implications for traditional

concepts of information security and classification? Can classified,

heavily compartmented approaches—running as they do essentially

against the grain of the Information Age’s defining characteristic,

that of information proliferation—be effective in pursuing a military

concept supposedly suited specifically to the character of that age?

Where do the military’s purview and responsibilities concerning Information

Warfare and information security begin? Where do they

end? Are the American society and its military, as the most information-

dependent society and military in the world, really wise in advocating

Information Warfare as our preferred new style of conflict? If,

as is increasingly espoused, Information Warfare is more than just a

military proposition, must the society as a whole be capable of

pursuing—and defending against—it if the military is to be able to do

its part effectively? If the society has problems in meeting IW’s challenges

(say, for example, in mustering the national will that the concept’s

defensive imperatives presume), does the military have an appropriate

role in helping the society deal with such non-military

requirements and implications? If so, what is that role?

These are hard but fair questions which the quickly forming Information

Warfare community should be prepared to answer. At a

minimum, their serious consideration should provide the concept

with an intellectual vector appropriate to its thrust—of course, that is

if Information Warfare is more than the mere fashion that some

skeptics suspect it to be and, also, if our national security structure is

capable of recasting itself adequately to effectively implement such a

comprehensive idea. If the concept is faultable on either of the latter

INFORMATION WARFARE

But, how are such questions most effectively addressed? Is there

perhaps a particularly suitable intellectual prism through which to

consider Information Warfare with the necessary rigor appropriate to

the importance that the concept’s advocates claim for it? How best

to explicitly examine a spectrum of issues as implicit to so many

The head of the "Information Warfare Arrow" is comprised of intellectual

effectiveness of a highly complex sort. Probably more so than

any other form of global security competition, Information Warfare

will require exceptional intellectual mastery of the important but

subtle hierarchical relationships between policy, strategy, operations

("campaigns"), and tactics. It will equally demand a sophisticated

appreciation of the relationships of all of these perspectives to technology.

Without such mastery of these relationships, Information Warfare carries

with it great risks.

The best technology, even when employed with the greatest of tactical

effectiveness, can be counterproductive if the technology and its

employment are not orchestrated against a set of well conceived,

hierarchically consistent operational, strategic, and policy objectives.

While this observation is true regarding any military or quasi-military

undertaking, it is especially important regarding Information Warfare

which is first and foremost an intellectual rather than a technological

or physical undertaking. Information Warfare carries with it

especially heavy risks of "winning battles but losing wars." The best

of technology and tactics cannot protect against these risks in the

face of poor policy, strategy, and operational concepts and the

unprecedented degree of conceptual, doctrinal, structural, procedural,

and technology integration—i.e., far beyond "jointness"—that effective

Information Warfare is certain to demand.

The arcane (and now largely irrelevant) policy and strategic machinations

of the Cold War excepted, Post–World War II U.S. military

thinking has been generally at its best at the levels of tactics (i.e., the

specifics of "employment") and technology. True, the 1970s saw a

renewed appreciation of the "operational art" perspective (also

known as the "campaign level") of military employment and the Gulf

War demonstrated that since then we have made great strides in organizing

ourselves at that level. However, most observers agree that

the operational level still does not yet constitute our military’s long

suit. Yet, excellence at the operational level is vital to success in

Information Warfare for it is the conceptual bridge between higher-level

objectives and the means for achieving them.

Beyond these concerns, our system of government necessarily places

considerable ethical and political burdens upon those charged with

developing policy, strategic, and higher-level operational objectives—

burdens that are rooted in a logic borne of tradition and culture that

goes far beyond the exigencies of any particular set of global security

considerations. The net result is a national security and military

structure that is much more comfortable in addressing the technological

and resource means of conflict than it is in considering the

higher policy and strategic objectives of conflict.

For this much greater proficiency regarding means as opposed to

objectives not to constitute a potentially fatal flaw in the United

States’ pursuit of Information Warfare—certainly if the concept is

carried to its ultimate logic—will require fundamental changes in

how we understand conflict and the appropriate responses of our

society to it. In fact, the changes that might be required could be so

great as to raise a legitimate issue of not only whether we can but

even of whether we should make them, the challenges of Information

Warfare notwithstanding. Does our society want to be the sort that is

adept at the degree and types of control of information that some of

the more enthusiastic advocates of Information Warfare seem to presume?

This brings us to the concept of national will. Advocates of Information

Warfare must discipline themselves to assure that the overall

concept—or any particular aspects of it, even those under cover of

heavy security classification—do not conflict with or exceed the

imperatives of the national will and the crucial bond of trust between

people and their government. The loss of this trust would obviously

be the greatest Information Warfare disaster that can be imagined.

An Information Warfare concept that depends upon an unrealistic or

warped perception of the national will, while possibly still maintaining

its means thrust will certainly lack appropriate vector, possibly

even to the point of coming back to victimize those employing it. In

judging how and to what degree specifics of Information Warfare

employment are or are not commensurate with national will, it will

always be instructive to look at the factors of culture, politics, economics,

and infrastructure (all as perceived by the society). If a concept

runs against the reality or the societal perception of any of these

guiding factors, it must be regarded as highly risky. Again, reliance

upon heavy security classification to protect a concept from the extent

to which it might run against the societal grain can only exacerbate

Even if fairly conservatively applied, the Information Warfare concept

will require highly integrated, holistic employment throughout

the policy > tactics/technology spectrum of perspectives which must

exceed anything our current military culture and structure has ever

demonstrated to date. (If, as is implied in the narrower articulations

of the concept, Information Warfare remains confined to the tactical

level and middle/lower rungs of the operational perspective—such

as during the Gulf War—one might ask what is to differentiate

"Information Warfare" from what are now more or less conventionally

high degree of integration, the concept is certain to founder in its

practical employment for lack of coherence.

As in all military associated employment, the key to coherence in

Information Warfare will be effective doctrine. In addition to the

several perspectives portrayed by the "arrow," this doctrine—and the

structures and procedures it implies—will have to acknowledge Information

Warfare to include three highly interdependent spheres of

competition with actual and/or potential adversaries of the United

States. These are (1) the capacity for offensive action against the enemy’s

decision-making structure and processes; (2) protection of our

own capabilities to make and effect decisions; and (3) the capacity to

create and use information for our own purposes more effectively

than adversaries can create and use information for their purposes.

Underlying all of these relationships, and adding to their maddeningly

subtle complexities is a curious but unavoidable irony that is

implicit to the Information Warfare concept: i.e., that the U.S. must

develop very sophisticated and complex means for attacking adversaries’

typically far less developed information/decision structures

while still further having to protect our own highly developed infrastructure

Of the three competitive spheres, the heavy preponderance of attention

currently given Information Warfare seems certainly to focus on

the concept’s offensive potentials. Not only does this reflect the U.S.

military’s natural offensive affinity, it also probably reflects the fact

that offensive concepts are less fettered by limitations of established

U.S. information practice, structure, and process. An already observable

feature of this is the tendency for Information Warfare responsibilities—

even seemingly operational ones—to migrate into organizations

that are part of—or which are at least heavily involved

with the Intelligence Community (especially its SIGINT Components).

These are organizations that, at least in theory, are most

suited to assessing targets for Information Warfare applications.

How these Intelligence-focused organizations will handle the inherent

tension between the natural intelligence inclination to exploit

enemy information for its intelligence potential and the operators’

natural inclination to destroy or disrupt enemy information sources

and flows is certain to become a major doctrinal issue. (A cynic

might see something here akin to the Intelligence fox being put in

charge of the Information Warfare henhouse.) Whoever is responsible,

the necessary doctrinal responsibility and authority to assure

that offensive applications accord with all levels of conflict perspecive—

tactical up through the policy level—are sure to be demanding

ones and to require concepts of organization and process for which

The protective (i.e., "defensive") aspects of the Information Warfare

concept are even more difficult to handle doctrinally, structurally,

and procedurally. This is because convenience and operational efficacy

in the handling of information usually imply vulnerabilities in

the information and decision-making processes which can be fairly

readily assessed and exploited/interfered with by an adversary.

Strong doctrinal guidance will be required to direct the IW concept

through the maze of "either-or" issues that this tension between

general security and immediate efficacy must inevitably raise.

Whether a community which is heavily imbued with an Intelligence

perspective can adequately define, let alone resolve such issues remains

As complex as these first two competitive spheres of the Information

Warfare concept are, they pale in difficulty in comparison to the

third—that of the relative effectiveness of our own information

where subtle asymmetries between our own objectives, capabilities,

and information dependencies and those of adversaries, if not readily

recognized and taken into account, can wreak disaster.

It might be useful to characterize the situation as follows: We must

always be prepared to see ourselves as highly sophisticated "cyber-warriors"

who might eventually need to be able to attack and defend

against enemies much of our own kind. But we need more immediately

the capacity to attack and defend against the equivalent of

clever Information Age "neanderthals" who are less dependent upon

sophisticated information means than are we but who have adequate

sophistication to understand and means to exploit that fact.

Even without considering direct attacks against each other’s information/

decision capacities notwithstanding, the effective use of information

to make timely appropriate decisions is a highly complex

proposition. Again, it is a challenge primarily of intellect and only

secondarily is it one of technology.

Viewed in this sense, the Command and Control process must be

seen as one too profound to be left to those who are merely expert in

its technical means—i.e., "communicators," computer specialists,

experts in the technologies of information, and the like who in our

military culture are most closely identified with the means and processes

of Command and Control. To relegate the C2 information/

decision-making process to the technical perspectives of these

specialists would be uncomfortably analogous to having the tele-phone

company install a telephone for you then expecting them to

tell you what to say on it. The best of C2 technology and technology

architectures cannot substitute for the conceptual and intellectual

quality of the decisions they support.

To achieve the sophistication and doctrinal coherence and effectiveness

necessary to provide that quality, especially in response to the

unprecedented demands of Information Warfare, will the U.S. military

culture to accept at least two conceptual distinctions with which

it naturally has trouble.

First, the military must be able to better distinguish between

"efficiency" and "effectiveness" in order to be sure that, in regard to a

specific situation or objective, it is not "doing the wrong thing well."

Especially in terms of Information Warfare effectiveness, the need to

make such distinctions requires great effort in developing new—

essentially non-attritively based measures of merit—by which to

gauge the meanings of effectiveness which the concept implies.

Second, Information Warfare requires sophisticated distinctions to

be made between hierarchical levels of the cognitive process by

which data and information contribute to effective decisions, a process

which Information Warfare wants to degrade for the enemy and

to preserve and enhance for ourselves. Chief among these distinctions

are those between "awareness" (the lowest level of cognition),

"knowledge," and "understanding." One can be "aware" of something

but not know its specifics. Similarly, one can "know" something,

even very well, but not "understand" its full implications, especially

as they impact and are impacted by specific circumstances.

(For example, the West "knew" a lot about the Soviet Union, but, as it

turned out, our "knowledge" far exceeded what we actually

"understood" about it.)

The two principal objectives in Information Warfare must be (1) to

degrade adversaries’ capacity for understanding their own circumstances,

our circumstances, and the circumstances that affect all

sides while preserving and enhancing our capacity for such understanding

and (2) to degrade adversaries’ capacities to make effective

use of whatever correct understandings they might achieve and,

again, to preserve and enhance our own capacities in this regard.

(Note: As in earlier history, future conflicts could well be multilateral,

with alliances brief, partial, and calculated often only for the

most fleeting advantage; this is yet a further practical complication

which Information Warfare advocates must directly confront.)

Achieving and preserving the advantages that will accrue in winning

such a competition will be fundamental to future success in the future

global security competition that is likely to evolve. As such, Information

Warfare cannot be pursued as something "exotic" and separate from

the mainstream of the command, control, and employment of military forces.

Therefore, the ultimate Information Warfare question is this: Is the U.S.

national security structure capable of the intellectual and doctrinal

suppleness required to pursue an implicit set of concerns and issues using

highly calculated, specific means, to achieve explicit, but coherent

objectives?

Yet again, whether or not the limitations of our previous military experience

and the resulting U.S. national security/military culture and

intellectual style that it has produced will permit us to effectively

meet the doctrinal demands for conceptual and employment coherence

which Information Warfare poses must at this point remain an

Obviously, the post–Cold War era, most notably the aspects of it that

comprise the "Information Age," requires a new approach to global

security. "Information Warfare" is gaining considerable momentum

as the conceptual vehicle with which the United States, especially the

military, hopes to meet this challenge. However, the concept’s far-reaching

and complex implications dictate degrees of intellectual,

structural, and procedural coherence that would exceed by far anything

that the modern U.S. national security/military structures have

achieved in the past.

For this reason, an objective observer must remain skeptical—if also

hopeful—about Information Warfare’s historical viability as a new

global security concept for the United States. It seems that the only

thing more difficult than readying ourselves for Information Warfare

1 Les Aspin, Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to the President and the Congress,

Washington, D.C., January 1994, pp. 227–228.

2 This is not to imply that we have now finally adequately developed our Counter

Command and Control concepts and capabilities, even at the tactical and lower

operational levels. To appreciate the full complexity and potential/implications of

information conflict on those and also higher planes, see especially V.V. Druzhinin

and D.s. Kontorov, "Concept, Algorithm, and Decision," Moscow, Voinizdat, 1972.

(One of the USAF "Soviet Military Thought" translation series.) Counter C2 and

information Warfare concepts that are not rooted in appreciation of issues raised by

Druzhinin and Kontorov probably should be held intellectually suspect. (However, it

is not necessary to agree with the authors’ decidedly Soviet conclusions about many

specific issues.) For a more recent, perhaps even deeper discussion of information

and its use/manipulation, see also Keith Devlin, Logic and Information, Cambridge

(UK), Cambridge University Press, 1991. For a less theoretical treatment applicable to

the tactical and operational levels, see as well the current author’s "Counter

Command and Control in Conceptual Perspective," Air University Review, Jan–Feb

1980. This article, while dated in its focus on the Soviet adversary, explores several

conceptual issues which probably still warrant consideration.

3 It is in recognition of the complexities that this section addresses that the National

Defense University has designated the curriculum it intends to address these issues as

a curriculum in "Information-based Warfare." Others are also coming more