Sections

Introduction

Origins of the NCW Concept

Development of the Concept

Main Characteristics

NCW – Broad Definition

NCW – An Emerging Theory of War

Tenets and Governing Principles

NCW in the Indian Context

References

Introduction

Network Centric Warfare (NCW) is an emerging theory of war in the Information Age. It is also a concept that, at the highest level, constitutes the military’s response to the Information Age. The term “network centric warfare”, first coined by Vice Admiral Arthur K Cebrowski, US Navy, broadly describes the combination of strategies, emerging tactics, techniques and procedures, as well as organizations that a fully or even a partially networked force can employ to create a decisive warfighting advantage.

As we progress into the twenty-first century, technology continues to play a greater role in the way militaries operate. However, it is not simply new weapons, aircraft or warships that are transforming the militaries of today. The way in which forces communicate and share intelligence across various hierarchical levels has been revolutionized through the use of networks. More specifically, networks link nearly all military assets at a state’s disposal to each other and to the decision makers. From the commanders on the ground, aircraft missions in the air, naval fleets operating over water and submarines lurking under the oceans, operationalising NCW concepts provides a military the ability to attain a high level of shared battlespace awareness that is exploited to achieve strategic, operational, and tactical objectives in accordance with the commander’s intent.

Origins of the NCW Concept

The most influential and often cited statement of the NCW vision was an article written in 1998 by Vice Admiral Cebrowski and co-author John Garstka, “Network Centric Warfare: Its Origins and Future” [1]. Cebrowski stated that the world was in the midst of a revolution in military affairs (RMA) unlike any seen since the Napoleonic Age, when France transformed warfare with the concept of levee en masse. It has been called “a fundamental shift from what we call platform centric warfare to something we call network centric warfare,” and it will prove to be the most important RMA in the past 200 years.

Drawing from a combination of the writings of Information Age futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler [2] as well as complexity theory, Cebrowski saw transformational changes in the Information Age having similar effects on economics, businesses as well as warfare.

Changes in Underlying Economics

Changes in dynamics of growth and competition have emerged in the modern economy, with the new dynamics being based on increasing returns on investment, competition within and between systems and competition based on time. Information technology (IT) is central to each of these changes.

Changes in Underlying Technologies

IT is undergoing a fundamental shift from platform centric computing to network centric computing. Platform-centric computing emerged with the widespread proliferation of personal computers in business and in the home. Network centric computing is governed by Metcalfe’s Law, which asserts that the power of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes in the network. The payoff of network centric computing comes from information intensive interactions between very large numbers of computational nodes in the network.

Changes in Business Models

Dominant competitors across the world have, over the last couple of decades, made the shift to network centric operations and have translated information superiority into significant competitive advantage. The shift from platforms to networks is what enables the more flexible and more dynamic (and profitable) network centric operation.

How Can the Military Not Change?

This was a rhetorical question posed by Cebrowski in his seminal article in 1998 [1]. He stated that in tactics speed is very critical. Network centric warfare enables a shift from attrition-style warfare to a much faster and more effective warfighting style characterized by the new concepts of speed of command and self-synchronization, which are governed by a simple principle which says “availability of information or ability to react is not as important as the ability to react to information faster than the enemy.”

He further stated that we are at the confluence of three broad trends [3]: the movement of our society from Industrial Age to Information Age; the appearance of an expanded array of threats in an uncertain context; and vast technological opportunities available to friend and foe alike.

Development of the Concept

The development of the intellectual foundation of NCW originated from Department of Defence (DoD), USA. A series of books were published by the DoD Command and Control Research Program (CCRP), which brought out the evolution and development of NCW [4].

The first book in this series, Network Centric Warfare: Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority [5], provided the first detailed articulation of the tenets that link a robustly networked force to dramatically increased combat power. It also described how information, coupled with changes in command and control, could transform military organizations. Two additional volumes completed the three-volume set, Information Age Anthology: Understanding Information Age Warfare [6] and Information Age Transformation [7].

Another important book published by the CCRP, Effects Based Operations: Applying Network Centric Warfare in Peace, Crisis and War [8], explored the link between network centric organizations and processes and mission outcomes.

Main Characteristics

NCW is governed by several basic characteristics, which are briefly discussed in succeeding paragraphs [1].

Speed of Command

It allows armed forces to develop speed of command, which has three parts:-

• Information Superiority. The force achieves information superiority, having a dramatically better awareness or understanding of the battlespace rather than simply more raw data.
• Massing of Effects. Forces acting with speed, precision and reach achieve the massing of effects versus the massing of forces. A warfighting force with networked capabilities allows a commander to analyse the battlespace, rapidly communicate critical information to friendly combat forces, and marshal a lethal combination of air, land and sea capabilities to exert massed effects against an adversary.
• Foreclosure of Enemy Options. The results that follow are a rapid foreclosure of enemy options and the shock of closely coupled events. This disrupts the enemy’s strategy by operating within his Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop.

Self-Synchronization

NCW enables the forces to self-synchronize to meet the commander’s intent, as explained below:-

• Military operations today are very complex, and complexity theory states that complex enterprises organise best from the bottom-up. Traditionally, however, militaries adopt top-down command-directed synchronization to achieve the required level of combat capability at the point of contact with the enemy. This method not only takes more time but can also provide opportunities to the enemy. After the initial engagement, there is an operational pause, and the cycle repeats.
• In contrast, a bottom-up organization results in self-synchronization of forces. The “OODA Loop” appears to disappear, and the enemy is denied an operational pause.

Situational Awareness

In platform centric military operations, situational awareness steadily deteriorates. It is re-established periodically, but then deteriorates again. Situational awareness improves our ability to deter conflict, or to prevail if conflict becomes unavoidable. Technology, conjointly with new operational concepts, doctrine, and organization, today allows commanders at all levels to have better awareness of the battlefield.

Human Behaviour

The implementation of NCW is primarily about human behaviour as opposed to information technology. It does not treat “network” as a noun, rather it treats “to network” as a verb [4]. Thus, when examining the degree to which a particular military organization is exploiting the power of NCW, the focus should be on human behaviour in the networked environment, rather than the network itself. NCW is all about connecting forces across the operational environment to leverage Information Age technologies in order to reduce (though not eliminate) the “fog and friction of war.”

Effect Based Operations

A networked force conducting Network Centric Operations (NCO) is an essential enabler for the conduct of Effects Based Operations (EBO). EBO are “sets of actions directed at shaping the behaviour of friends, adversaries and neutral agencies across the spectrum of conflict. EBO is not a new form of warfighting. Rather, enabled by networked forces, EBO is a methodology for planning and executing military operations designed to attain specific effects that achieve desired national security outcomes.

Complexity

National security in the “Information Age” involves a complex environment, where any armed force is confronted by instantaneous media coverage, insurgencies, terrorist cells, regional instability and adversaries, using commercially available state-of-the-art high technology devices. Therefore, military operations are now characterized by greater complexity. Events involving greater complexity are less effectively controlled through traditional industrial-age methods that de-construct problems into a manageable series of predictable pieces and better addressed by achieving “agility” attained as a result of net-centricity [8].

NCW – Broad Definition

There are various definitions of the term NCW, although all agree that NCW’s basic precept is the use of networked technology to provide an advantage on the battlefield. A US Congressional Research Service report [9] defines NCO (a term which may be viewed as “applied NCW”) as operations that rely “on computer equipment and networked communications technology to provide a shared awareness of the battlespace”. Other nations may refer to the concept differently; the UK, for example, denotes this as Network Enabled Capability [10].

As per Cebrowski, NCW is the military expression of the Information Age. It refers to the combination of strategies, emerging tactics, techniques and procedures, organizations and technologies that a networked force employs to create a decisive warfighting advantage. It provides a new conceptual framework with which to examine military missions, operations, and organizations in the Information Age. As an organizing principle, NCW accelerates our ability to know, decide, and act by linking sensors, communications systems, and weapons systems in an interconnected grid [3].

As per Alberts, NCW is about human and organizational behaviour. It is based on adopting a new way of thinking – network-centric thinking – and applying it to military operations. NCW focuses on the combat power that can be generated from the effective linking or networking of the warfighting enterprise. It is characterized by the ability of geographically dispersed forces (consisting of entities) to create a high level of shared battlespace awareness that can be exploited via self-synchronization and other NCO to achieve commanders’ intent. NCW derives its power from the strong networking of a well-informed but geographically dispersed force. NCW is applicable to all levels of warfare and contributes to the coalescence of strategy, operations, and tactics. It is transparent to mission, force size and composition, as well as geography [5].

NCW – An Emerging Theory of War

A theory is a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument, an unproved assumption. It is also a formulation of apparent relationships or underlying principles of certain observed phenomena which has been verified to some degree. The working hypothesis of NCW as an emerging theory of war, simply stated, is that “the behaviour of forces, when in the networked condition, will outperform forces that are not.”

An analyses of the NCW concept as well as case studies of warfighting from recent times, do seem to indicate that the NCW hypothesis as stated above does indeed match up to qualify as a new theory of warfighting.

Tenets and Governing Principles

The NCW concept is based on four basic tenets and a set of governing principles for a network-centric force. Together, these tenets and principles comprise the core of NCW as an emerging theory of war in the Information Age [4].

Tenets

The four tenets of NCW, given out below, help us understand the enhanced power of networked forces and how the NCW concept, if practiced, acts as a source of warfighting advantage:-

Governing Principles

The governing principles for a network-centric force guide the application of NCW as an emerging theory of war. In effect, they constitute the new rules by which a network-centric force organises, trains, and operates. While it is not suggested that these principles have supplanted or are going to replace the time-tested principles of war – mass, objective, offensive, security, economy of force, manoeuvre, unity of command, surprise, and simplicity – they provide added direction for executing military operations in the Information Age. The principles are: Fight First for Information Superiority, Shared Awareness, Speed of Command and Decision Making, Self-Synchronization, Dispersed Forces, De-massification, Deep Sensor Reach, Compressed Operations and Levels of War, and finally, Alter Initial Conditions at Higher Rates of Change. For an explanation of these principles, the reader is referred to [4].

NCW in the Indian Context

NCW is about networking, as robust networking is the entry point for operationalizing the NCW concept. At the tri-services level, the Defence Communication Network (DCN) has recently been commissioned after decades of work. However, there is still plenty of scope for improving inter-service networking, much of which is inhibited due to security concerns. Intra-service backbone networks are mostly state-of-the-art or well on their way to becoming so. Tactical networks are a weak area for all the three services, with the Air Force best placed presently in this realm, mainly because of the higher degree of difficulty associated with Army and Naval tactical networks.

NCW is about information processing and sharing. The status of development of applications at strategic, operational and tactical levels leaves much to be desired. The phenomenal explosion of application software, particularly in the sphere of information processing, being witnessed in the commercial arena is not seen to be reflected in the defence environment. While the reasons for this state of affairs are multi-fold, one of the primary reasons is that while computing hardware and networking technologies are comparatively easier to adapt from the commercial to the defence environment, the same is not true for applications. Therefore, there is need to either develop strong in-house expertise in this sphere, or at least have requisite expertise to develop the right interfaces with the industry. These areas, therefore, need to be worked upon.

NCW is about people and organizations. It is essentially a Command & Control concept, and a difficult one to understand. Although the term “NCW” frequently finds mention in 21sr Century warfighting concepts and doctrines, it is more often than not used synonymously with “networking”, which indicates a shallow understanding of this transformational paradigm of warfare. As a result, adequate adoption of this concept in terms of doctrines, organizational re-structuring and, most importantly, mindsets, is yet to take place.

In summary, while good progress has been made in the area of defence backbone networks, there is a lot of ground to be covered in many other areas for achieving true network-centric warfighting capabilities.

References

(1)   Cebrowski AK and Garstka John, Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future, US Naval Institute Proceedings, Annapolis, Maryland, January 1998.

(2)   Toffler, Alvin and Heidi, War and Anti-War, Warner Books, London, 1993.

(3)   Military Transformation: A Strategic Approach, Office of Force Transformation, November 2003, pp 28.

(4)   Cebrowski A K, The Implementation of Network Centric Warfare, Office of Force Transformation, US DoD, 05 Jan 05.

(5)   Alberts DS, Garstka JJ, and Stein FP, Network Centric Warfare: Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority, 2nd edition (revised). Washington, DC, DoD CCRP, Feb 2000.

(6)   Alberts DS, Garstka JJ, Hayes RE, and Signori DA, Understanding Information Age Warfare, Washington, DC, DoD CCRP, 2001.

(7)   David S. Alberts, Information Age Transformation: Getting to a 21st Century Military (revised), Washington DC, DoD CCRP, June 2002.

(8)   Edward A Smith Jr, Effects-Based Operations: Applying Network-Centric Warfare in Peace, Crisis and War, Washington, DC, DoD CCRP, 2002.

(9)   Clay Wilson, NCO: Background and Oversight Issues for Congress, CRS Report for Congress, 15 Mar 07.

(10) Colonel Iain Standen, Network Enabled Capability: A UK Perspective, RUSI Defence Systems June 2010.