INFORMATION OPERATIONS
Cyberspace: The Fifth Dimension of Warfare – Part I
The dimensions of warfare have evolved over the centuries from Land and Sea to encompass Air and Outer Space in the 20th Century. With the heavy dependence on networks in the 21st Century, Cyberspace is emerging as an increasingly contested domain, with critical importance for the projection of military force. Here, in a two-piece write-up, we discuss the emergence of Cyberspace as an operational domain of warfare, deliberate on types and classifications of cyber-attacks/ cyberwar, briefly describe some real-world examples of cyberwar over the past decade, and finally dwell upon certain doctrinal aspects related to offensive cyberwar strategies as well as some legal implications of conducting cyberwar.
21st Century Warfare: From “Battlefield” to “Battlespace”
It is the increasing complexity of the modern warfighting arena which has prompted the replacement of the traditionally used term “battlefield” by the term “battlespace” in doctrinal literature, as the former tends to implicitly highlight the pre-dominance of land based operations over others, while “battlespace” as a term has a neutral flavour with respect to the nature of the arena. In recent years, several modern armies have adopted the five-dimensional model, comprising of the land, sea, air, space and cyberspace warfighting domains, in their military doctrines to define this battlespace. In this write-up this model, together with Cebrowski’s Domains of Conflict construct, is reviewed and analysed.
Information Operations: Origins and Fundamentals – Part II
Information Warfare (IW) is expected to play an increasingly dominant role in twenty first century conflict, wherein military superiority is a composite function of combat, electronic and information superiority. Various armies are continuously evolving their concepts, doctrines and roadmaps for operationalising IW concepts. This two-part write-up attempts to introduce the concept of IW/ Information Operations (IO). Here in Part II of the write-up, some well-accepted IW taxonomies are first given out, followed by a brief overview of the notion of Information Superiority. Finally, some comments are made on the status of IW in the Indian context.
Information Operations: Origins and Fundamentals – Part I
Information Warfare (IW) is expected to play an increasingly dominant role in 21st Century conflict, wherein military superiority is a composite function of combat, electronic and information superiority. In a two-part write-up, the concept of IW/ Information Operations (IO) is introduced. This first part highlights the importance of information on the battlefield, reviews the idea of three “waves” of warfare proposed by the futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler, and dwells on certain theoretical underpinnings of IW, such as a Cognitive Hierarchy, an Information Model of Warfare and the notion of an Information Battlespace.