Sections

China

Russia

References

[This piece is in continuation to “Network Centric Warfare: An Enduring Theory of Warfighting (Part II)”, which covered implementation status in the UK, Australia, and NATO]

China

“Informatization” of the Battlefield

In 1993, under the leadership of Jiang Zemin, the military strategic goal was set to win “local wars under high-tech conditions.” After facing resistance during the initial years, this thinking gained acceptance within the PLA, based on the realisation that C4ISR capabilities were essential for winning wars. Thereafter, in the Hu Jintao era, the military goal was modified to “winning local wars under the conditions of informationization.” This change was influenced by the dramatic successes achieved by the US in the conventional operations conducted by it in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In conceptual terms, while “high tech conditions” implied a focus on mechanisation with focus on attacking physical targets, “informatization” implied targets in virtual space as well [1]. Ultimately, PLA theorists acknowledge that warfare is about killing and destruction, and “just as mechanization made war more destructive, Information Age warfare will allow fires to be more destructive [2].The 2013 edition of the Science of Military Strategy [3] states that, in contrast to mechanized warfare which focuses on physical destruction, “informationized warfare” would use information operations capabilities such as cyberattacks to paralyse an adversary’s command and control system. The terms “informatized” and “informationized’ are often used synonymously in the literature.

According to the Glossary of the Chinese PLA, Informationized Warfare refers to “wars that use informationized weaponry and equipment and related operational methods based on networked information systems and take place mainly in the form of systems confrontation in land, sea, air, space, cyber, and electromagnetic spaces and the cognitive domains.”

In a further modification of strategic military thought, the 2015 edition of the National Defense White Paper, China’s Military Strategy [4], states that, “The basic point for preparation for military struggle will be placed on winning informationized local wars.” The change from “winning local wars under the conditions of informationization” to the concept of “informationized warfare” is noteworthy. While the former signified winning mechanized wars efficiently based on wartime intelligence inputs, the focus of the latter was on striking the adversary’s information infrastructure, using information weapons. Perhaps because of the characteristics of cyber warfare, the use of the term “local” was also omitted in the enunciation of this strategy [5].

Network Centric Warfare vis-à-vis “Informatized Warfare”

The phrases “winning local wars under conditions of informationization” and “informationized warfare” are open to different interpretations. In this context, in the author’s view, information age warfare has thrown up two main operational concepts, namely, Network Centric Warfare (NCW) and Information Operations (IO). The terms NCW and IO are sometimes used in a synonymous sense. This, however, is an incorrect understanding of these concepts. The following may be stated on the relationship between NCW and IO [6]:-

• Both IO and NCW are Information Age concepts. However, the commonality ends there.
• While IO is a form of warfare and involves a struggle in the information/ cognitive domains to achieve information dominance (attack/ defend functions), NCW leverages the information domain to achieve increased combat effectiveness primarily in the physical domain.
• IO play out in the adversary (IO Attack) as well as own (IO Defend) infosphere. However, in the case of NCW, except for the sensor element which links into the adversary battlespace (mostly to the physical domain and partially to the information domain) the balance of the play of NCW is in one’s own infosphere.
• The full application of the NCW principles is predicated on a robust and reliable linking of sensors, decision makers and weapons systems via an interconnecting network. The reliability and availability of the network can only be ensured by achieving information dominance through strong IO capabilities. In this sense, IO complement NCW.
• Stated in different words, NCW is all about speeding up one’s own OODA loop, while IO aims to disrupt the adversary’s OODA loop while protecting one’s own against such disruption.

Some authors interpret the Chinese use of the term “informationized” as implying both the NCW and IO paradigms. While this understanding may well have some merit, in the opinion of this author, the term “informatized conditions” better aligns with NCW, while the term “informationized warfare” encompasses both NCW and IO paradigms. Additionally, in Chinese military doctrine the notion of IO is better captured in their concepts of Integrated Network Electronic Warfare (INEW) and Three Warfares [7].

From ‘Informationized” to “Intelligentized” Warfare

The current military thinking within the CCP and the PLA is undergoing further metamorphosis, from a concept of “informationized warfare” to “intelligentized warfare”. With the advent of technologies such as AI, robotics, and game theory, “intelligentized warfare” is expected to result in operational concepts which are based on the synergetic employment of humans and machines, and characterized by advanced analytics, autonomous systems, and “cognitive dominance” in contrast to “information dominance”.

To support ‘informationized warfare”, the Strategic Support Force was raised by re-organising the erstwhile general departments of the PLA to achieve a high level of synergy amongst strategic cyber, electromagnetic, and psychological warfare resources [8]. It is assessed that as and when “intelligentized” capabilities are fielded, the SSF may be further reorganized to fight “intelligized warfare” more effectively.

In general, one of the chief effects of intelligization of own battlespace would be to tremendously speed up one’s own OODA loop, thus enhancing combat effectiveness even further.

Net-Centricity is Central to Current PLA Warfighting Strategy

A close look at the guiding principles and operational concepts which define the current PLA warfighting strategy indicates the centrality of net-centricity in this strategy [9].

Guiding Principles. The current warfighting strategy of the PLA is underpinned by three guiding principles: integrated joint operations, informationized war and systems-of-systems confrontation (or system destruction warfare).

• Integrated joint operations are described as networked, multi-service operations which employ digitized weapons in the operational domains of land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace (or information).
• Informationized war envisages the highest importance to superiority in the information domain.
• Since 2005, the PLA has been developing an integrated system confrontation approach to operations, which is akin to but broader than the US notion of NCW. This approach is contingent upon an operational system which is made up of five component systems: the command system, firepower strike system, information confrontation system, reconnaissance-intelligence system, and support system.

Operational Concepts. The above guiding principles translate into three operational concepts as follows: War control (or controlling the pace and intensity of conflict and escalation) depends on information dominance; combat space is shrinking, but war space has expanded; and Target-Centric Warfare (TCW) defeats the adversary’s operational system.

• Information dominance is achieved when friendly forces can seize and preserve the freedom and initiative to use information on the battlefield, while “simultaneously depriving an opponent” of that freedom and initiative. This is the essence of the US concept of IO.
• The PLA describes the concept of an expanding war space as the need to contest the enemy across the full spectrum of conflict, in all domains (land, air, sea, space, electromagnetic, and cyber) and beyond purely military actions to encompass political, economic, and diplomatic spheres. This closely corresponds to the US notion of DIME (diplomatic, informational, military, and economic) and multi-domain operations (MDO) within military actions.
• The guiding principle of system confrontation translates to the operational concept of TCW, which is described as attacking critical points in the enemy’s operational system to achieve decisive effects with minimal collateral damage. TCW in turn is contingent upon five core operational subsystems: an information support system (networks), an early warning and reconnaissance system (sensors), a real-time C2 system (decision support system), integrated offensive and defensive force system (shooters), and an integrated support system (spectrum management, GPS, etc). In effect, TCW has all the elements of NCW, with the additional feature that it is specifically focused on attacking critical targets with minimal collateral damage, in line with the Sun Tzu maxim of “winning wars without fighting”.

Fielding of C4ISR Systems

China continues to prioritize C4ISR modernization and fielding of networked, technologically advanced systems to provide reliable, secure communications to fixed and mobile command posts to facilitate rapid, effective, multi-echelon decision-making. Their Integrated Command Platform fielded in units at multiple levels across the force provides lateral and cross-service communications required for joint operations. Digital databases and command automation tools allow commanders to simultaneously issue orders to multiple units while on the move and enable units to quickly adapt their actions to shifting conditions in the battlespace. To upgrade from informationized warfare to intelligentized warfare, future information systems will likely implement emerging technologies such as big data, the internet of things, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud computing. The PLA has already begun this process by embracing big data analytics that fuse a variety of data to improve automation and to create a comprehensive, real-time picture [10].

Russia

Background

On October 14, 2008, Russian Defence Minister, Anatoliy Serdyukov, declared the key features of the “new look” reforms to enhance the combat capabilities and combat readiness of their conventional armed forces, loosely centred on the paradigm of forming mobile, smaller, and modernized forces. It seemed to make sense given the operational failings of the Russian armed forces during the Russo-Georgian War and marked a consistent and determined campaign to restructure and train the military for the conflicts of the 21st Century [11].

The advanced development of network-centric capabilities in the US armed forces, among other NATO members, and the intensification of China pursuing asymmetric network-centric capabilities vis-à-vis the US, were geostrategic factors influencing Russian defence policy. This was entirely consistent with Russian thinking on the nature of future war, encapsulated in President Dmitry Medvedev’s warning that wars will erupt unexpectedly and rapidly, and represented within the 2010 military doctrine: “Military actions will be typified by the increasing significance of precision, electromagnetic, laser, and infrasound weaponry, computer-controlled systems, drones and autonomous maritime craft, and guided robotized models of arms and military equipment … Characteristic features of contemporary military conflicts are … an increase in the promptness of command and control as a result of transitioning from a strict vertical system of command and control to a global networked automated command and control system for troops (forces) and weaponry” [12].

“New Look” Reforms and NCW

While only a few western analysts drew a correspondence between the “new look” reforms and the US notion of NCW, a good number of Russian military analysts identified the confluence between the reforms and “non-contact warfare”, a terminology analogous to NCW which is characterised by stand-off precision weapons operating as part of the NCW OODA loop [13]. While the use of the term NCW itself was missing from the reform agenda, it became part of the official lexicon as reflected in official documents, military literature as well as statements made by the military hierarchy. Its usage often betrayed an inadequate understanding of the term. Nevertheless, its linkage to the “new look” agenda was evident by the employment of its concepts during the conduct of operational-strategic exercises.

Russian military theorists and analysts closely studied the development of network-centric capabilities in foreign militaries, especially following the US-led intervention in Iraq in 2003, and after the enunciation of the reforms. There was consensus of views in general, which however was also tempered by a divergence of views on the benefits of adoption of NCW concepts. Contributions and views of the prominent Russian military theorists are given out in succeeding paragraphs.

Maj Gen Vladimir Slipchenko: Sixth Generation Wars

The late Major-General Vladimir Slipchenko, as early as 1999, classified wars into six generations, the last one characterized by advanced conventional precision weapons having the destructive potential of tactical nuclear weapons (sixth generation). As per his writings, sixth-generation wars would be characterised by offensive aerospace operations and electronic warfare, with a supporting role being assigned to ground forces; the adversary’s economic infrastructure would be a primary target; the distinction between combatants and non-combatants would become blurred; and since operational and strategic objectives could be met by massive precision bombings, nuclear weapons would become obsolete. The changing nature of war would be dominated by forces struggling to achieve information superiority, using C4ISR and IW capabilities. He admitted, however, that kinetic-energy effects will still be the primary source of damage, and that the ground forces would still prove necessary in local or regional conflicts [14].

General Makhmut Gareev: Counterview

General Makhmut Gareev, President of the Academy of Military Sciences, drawing from the Russian combat experience in Afghanistan and Chechnya, questioned Slipchenko’s non-contact view of future warfare, and emphasized the continued importance of ground forces, especially in local wars, arguing that that precision-guided weapons might prove ineffectual if opposed skilfully. Gareev also argued that traditional contact warfare had largely achieved Moscow’s main strategic and operational objectives in Georgia. He however endorsed the “new look” reforms and its pursuit of non-contact capabilities but cautioned that contact warfare options must be pursued simultaneously, in some cases inflicting the latter type of warfare on an enemy that wants to avoid it [15].

Lieutenant-Colonel Aleksandr Kondratyev: Leading Proponent of NCW

Lieutenant-Colonel Aleksandr Kondratyev made an outstanding contribution towards propounding NCW concepts in Russia. He published many articles on intelligence, NCW and military reform, including several which analysed the application of NCW in support of ground, air and naval operations.

Kondratyev insightfully proposed that John Boyd’s OODA Loop takes on a new dimension in the Information age. The loop could be logically viewed in two parts: one informational (observe and orient) and the second kinetic (decide and act) relating to both manoeuvre of forces and firepower. While Industrial Age warfare emphasized the second (kinetic part of the loop), the Information Age underscored the importance of the former. An efficient information flow, facilitated by computational power and networks, turns intelligence into knowledge to aid the decision-makers across the entire battlespace. Kondratyev echoed the US view that, in 21st Century warfare, a fundamental shift was taking place from the platform-centric to network-centric warfare, spawning new principles of command and control and triggering an RMA in the process.

While Kondratyev was undoubtedly a leading Russian proponent of network-centric approaches to modern warfare, he was equally realistic in his view that it does not represent a panacea; rather it should be regarded as a vector of development [16, 17].

Major General Vasiliy Burenok: “Acting Faster than the Enemy”

Major General Vasiliy Burenok, Director of the Defence Ministry’s forty-sixth Research and Development Institute, in a ground-breaking article published in April 2010, stated that the objective of the reforms was to enable the Russian conventional armed forces to meet the challenges of 21st Century conflicts by leveraging the power of NCW.

Burenok highlighted the complexity involved in both the concept of NCW and its implementation within the Russian armed forces, characterizing it as consistent with the age-old military quest to act faster than the enemy, and highlighting the inter-relationship between force structure and the adoption of a new type of war-fighting capability. Burenok also asserted that many Russian analysts choose to consider it as a simple automation process for management of the troops and armaments.

He theorized that force restructuring must achieve the following: Stability: the capability of forces to perform all their assigned missions; Recoverability: the capacity of forces to function or recover their combat capabilities after suffering defeat by the enemy; Proficiency: the ability to respond to changes in the operational environment; Flexibility: the capacity to generate and execute different variants to perform a mission; Innovativeness: the capacity to apply new technical means and new methods of performing a mission; and Adaptability: the capacity to change processes for execution of tasks in response to change in the concept for the combat employment of troops [18].

Implementation Targets and Challenges

In 2000 President Putin ordered the Russian defense industry to design and develop a Unified System for Command and Control at the Tactical Level (YeSU TZ). The development of this system gathered momentum in the aftermath of the 2008 Russia-Georgia War and the subsequent initiation of military reforms, including the introduction of a brigade-based force structure for the Ground Forces and creating a flatter command & control structure. The Chief of the General Staff (CGS), General Nikolai Makarov, stated in July 2010 that the defence ministry planned to change-over to the network-centric principle of command and control by 2015.

Ever since 2009, the YeSU TZ was repeatedly tested during tactical or operational-strategic exercises. However, many design failures were repeatedly detected, including the lack of a user-friendly interface and concern over the system’s survivability against a high-technology adversary. Russian military strategists critical of network-centric warfare have been underscoring this failure to create a fully integrated automated system.

Despite these issues, the testing of the systems during the operational exercise Kavkaz 2016 was deemed by the defense ministry and the General Staff to be successful, and the measures being taken to address persisting problems suggest that a command & control system to support netcentric operations could well be in place in the period 2027-2030. Given the publicly available information on the capacity to deliver brigade sets of the YeSU TZ, around 40 percent of Ground Forces units may be network-enabled by 2030, with that percentage being 100 percent in the elite units: Special Forces, GRU Spetsnaz, Naval Infantry, etc [19].

Current Military Thought

The trend, therefore, in the modernization of the Russian Armed Forces is toward greater information and network-enabled integration, placing more emphasis on speed of command and control, speed of operations, strategic and tactical mobility, and networked-communications during combat operations [20]. Russia’s leading specialists on network-centric approaches are not advocating blind emulation of western countries and they understand that such technology-based approaches do not offer a panacea. However, they also feel that there is no alternative for Russia, which is heavily reliant on its nuclear capabilities to guarantee its safety. For many Russian military thinkers like Kondratyev, this push into the Information Era constitutes a “race against time” [21]. Following several years of experimentation with network-centric approaches and what this means for force structure, education, training and operational tactics, Russian top brass and theorists are in broad agreement that the concept may be used to drive the defense industry’s work to modernize the country’s Armed Forces and be used as a method to enhance the State’s future warfare capability [22].

Conclusion

This three-part series has traced the evolution of NCW in the US, UK, Australia, NATO, China, and Russia over the last several decades. It takes off from the concept of NCW as conceptualized in the US, which was dealt with extensively in a series of four previous articles. The dropping of the usage of the NCW lexicon in official doctrine in the country of its origin over a decade ago indicates an attitudinal shift in their outlook towards this information age concept, perhaps dictated by its debatable effectiveness when employed in 4GW conflict scenarios, such as Iraq and Afghanistan post the initial successes. Nevertheless, this work finds that basic tenets of NCW have survived and got ingrained into the operational ethos of the US Armed Forces, as reflected in the continued investment over the years in military systems which operationalize the concept.

The work discusses the different strains of NCW adopted by the UK, Australia, and the NATO as best suited to their operational contexts. Here too it finds that, over the years, while the conceptual strengths of NCW have been incorporated into their respective modernisation strategies, at the same time the use of the NCW terminology (NEC/ NNEC in the case of UK/ NATO) has largely fallen out of favour in military doctrine, perhaps subdued to a large extent by newer, more pressing, warfighting concepts emerging in the modern battlespace, such as information warfare, cyber warfare, and multi-domain operations.

The above study finds the great influence which the NCW (as also IW) concepts emerging from the US had on the military doctrines of both China and Russia. In China, the overarching military guiding principle of winning ‘informationized wars’ is clearly a flavour of NCW with Chinese characteristics. Similarly in Russia, the “new look reforms” enunciated in 2008 and thereafter followed up till date, although not very vigorously, bear a clear imprint of the basic tenets of NCW.

In summary, it may be concluded that all the major military powers have realised the importance of operationalizing NCW theory into their warfighting doctrines and over the years have taken determined steps towards this end. Against this backdrop, it needs to be analysed whether the Indian Armed Forces have internalised this concept adequately and taken the necessary steps to operationalize and dovetail it into their modernisation efforts. This aspect will be dealt with separately in a follow-up work.

References

(1)        NIDS China Security Report 2021: China’s Military Strategy in the New Era, Nov 2020, National Institute for Defense Studies, Japan, Accessed 05 May 2021.

(2)      Wortzel, Larry M, The Chinese People’s Liberation Army and Information Warfare, Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College publication, Mar. 2014, pp 6-15, Accessed 05 May 2021.

(3)      Science of Military Strategy 2013 (English Translation), China Aerospace Studies Institute, Dec 2013, Accessed 05 May 2021.

(4)      China’s Military Strategy, The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China May 2015, Beijing, May 2015, Accessed 05 May 2021.

(5)      NIDS China Security Report 2021: China’s Military Strategy in the New Era … pp. 14.

(6)      Lt Gen (Dr) R S Panwar, Network Centric Warfare vis-à-vis Modern Warfighting Concepts [Section on NCW vis-à-vis IO/ CO], Future Wars, 01 Jan 2018, Accessed 05 May 2021.

(7)      NIDS China Security Report 2021: China’s Military Strategy in the New Era … pp. 15-23.

(8)      Lt Gen (Dr) R S Panwar, Strategic Support Force and its Implications for India (Parts I to III), Future Wars, 09 Jun 2020, Accessed 05 May 2021.

(9)      Edmund J Burke et al, People’s Liberation Army Operational Concepts, RAND Corporation, 2020, pp. 5-21, Accessed 05 May 2021.

(10)     Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020, US Annual Report to the Congress, Office of the Secretary of Defence, pp. 82, Accessed 05 May 2021.

(11)     McDermott, RN, Russian Perspective on Network Centric Warfare: The Key Aim of Serdyukov’s Reform, Foreign Military Studies Office, Dec 2010.

(12)     The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, Russian Federation Presidential Edict, 05 February 2010, Accessed 01 May 2021.

(13)     McDermott, RN, Russian Perspective on Network Centric Warfare: The Key Aim of Serdyukov’s Reform, … , pp. 4.

(14)     Ibid., pp. 8.

(15)     Ibid., pp. 9.

(16)     Jacob W Kipp, Promoting the New Look for the Russian Armed Forces: the Contribution of Lieutenant-Colonel Aleksandr Kondratyev, 11 Jun 2010, Eurasia Daily Monitor Vol 7 Issue 13, The Jamestown Foundation, Accessed 06 May 2021.

(17)     Roger McDermott, Russian Perspective on Network Centric Warfare: The Key Aim of Serdyukov’s Reform, …, pp. 9-13.

(18)     Roger McDermott, Tracing Russia’s Path to Network-Centric Military Capability, 04 Dec 2020, The Jamestown Foundation, Accessed 06 May 2021.

(19)     Ibid.

(20)     Ibid.

(21)     Roger McDermott, Kondratyev, Network Centric Warfare and the Race Against Time, Eurasia Daily Monitor publication, The Jamestown Foundation, Vol 10, Issue 31, 19 Feb 13.

(22)     Roger McDermott, Tracing Russia’s Path to Network-Centric Military Capability, …