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Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a reporter he wished that cooperation shown by the military services on the joint battlefield would be reflected in the bitter battles over funds. One might note that the armed forces also fight fiercely over words, because definitions influence doctrine, roles and missions, then programs, funds and careers.
Dr. Tom Rona told me that he had not anticipated what later would flow from his 1976 study titled Weapons Systems and Information War. This report observed that the performance of weapons systems was increasingly and dangerously dependent on the external flow of information among weapons, targets, their command and control structures and necessary navigational aids. He had not expected this would lead to the concept that information itself could be an instrument of war and thus lead to new forms of combat. His views lead to the short-lived concept of command and control warfare (CC2) that begat information warfare (IW), thence morphing to the politically acceptable information operations (IO) which, itself is attended by differing and often conflicting definitions.
However, Dr. Rona’s concern over vulnerability of information systems on the conventional battlefield extended much farther and deeper. He commented on the “fascinating ramifications involving counterinsurgency and guerilla-type warfare”, the impact of information war on “open society” beliefs about privacy, freedom of information, and interactions with propaganda and psychological warfare. Rona pondered how the notion of an information war—a contest where words and images might be more important than bullets in altering human behavior—would impact on public policies.
I too shared Rona’s concern when, in the preface to my book The First Information War, I expressed concern that the role of information in the first Gulf war would be “overlooked and misunderstood” by historians, but that “if soundly assimilated, the principles of information warfare would lead to leaner and cheaper U.S. military forces but still capable of supporting this nation’s goals and objectives.”
The commander of the U.S. Joint force Command recently fueled the fire of word definitions when he issued a proclamation banning the term Effects Based Operations (EBO) from the lexicon of jointland. The offense of those words? Marine General Mattis deemed them duplicative and unnecessary verbiage that unduly advanced a technique that would be of marginal value to a commander in predicting the results of words and images in influencing the behavior of an adversary.
His controversial August 2008 memorandum argued that the term EBO “has been misapplied and overextended to the point that it actually hinders rather than helps joint operations”. Accordingly, USJFCOM “will no longer use, sponsor, or export the terms and concepts related to EBO.”
Belay that order urged Tomislav Z. Ruby in the Autumn 2008 issue of Parameters, writing that “Effects-based operations are not dead...are the key to attaining end-states in the Global War on Terrorism and other future conflicts and this concept will be around for some time.” Instead, Ruby urged that USJFCOM “as the lead agent for US military transformation activities, should spearhead the effort to bring operations under a unified EBO construct.”
Lt. Gen Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (Ret.) voiced support for the Mattis edict, saying many officers found “effects-based operations as a vacuous concept that slowly but surely undermined professional military thought and operational planning.” However, in his article in JFQ issue 52, Van Riper voiced less concern with the concept than with the term EBO itself, criticizing Col. John Warden and then Lt. Colonel David Deptula of poor choice of words in explaining an otherwise worthy concept. [emphasis added]
Van Riper commended these Air Force officers for trying to “push planners to move beyond the narrow focus of joint munitions manuals that describe effects of specific weapons against specific targets and for “working to ensure that everyone involved in planning and executing an operation understood why they sought to achieve certain ends. However, he then suggested that “They could have just as easily used other words to express the same idea”: such as “outcome-based, result-based, impact-based, purpose based or intent-based.”
Paul M. Carpenter and William F. Andrews rose in support of EBO in JFQ issue 52, writing that “Effects-based operations are combat proven” and “the USJFCOM directive to turn off EBO concepts is not well advised.” They did echo the criticism that “EBO concepts have promised unattainable predictability by linking to the highly deterministic computer-based modeling of ONA and SoSA, but they then added that part of the problem was in terminology, particularly among multinational partners. They said that emphasis should be placed on having the communities establish common lexicons and understandings. “Discarding EBO from our lexicon will not help bring our joint community together.” The worst course of action, they say, is to “foreclose on options by a vocabulary that inhibits full understanding.”
The sorry state and uncertain future of electronic warfare in the Air Force is due in no small measure to the lack of full understanding of words. Electronic warfare (EW) was lumped with all things digital into the IO bag and left without sponsorship when service funds were sharply reduced. One hopes for a brighter future for EW under the new 24th Air Force.
And finally there was Air Force Major General Bill Lord who was wounded by the friendly fire of words. While leading a band of digital natives in building the skills and organizational base to defend USAF information assets in cyberspace, he received an destabilizing blow from USAF public affairs (PA) officials who, while frantically seeking favorable publicity for that beleaguered service, crafted an infamous TV commercial portraying airmen at computers standing vigilant over this nations information systems.
How did we come to this “Balkanization” of approaches to information operations: where the U.S. federal government in general and its military in particular bewail inability to prevail in a war of words against insurgents, terrorists and “men in caves with cell phones? Because, we can’t agree on what to call these word and image weapons, who should employ them, under what circumstances, where or when.
This IO paradigm went wrong for these reasons. First, it ignored the dictum that form follows function. Second, it attempted to alter organizations to conform to bumper sticker slogans that constantly were adapting to political winds. Third, it concluded that integration of staff efforts required substantial staff reorganization. Fourth, it failed to heed the advice of Dan Kuehl, myself and others, that information should be viewed as three distinct and fundamentally different elements, each attended by individuals skilled in one component but not necessarily the others. Having taken some liberties with the Kuehl version, the three elements are:
- Physical component—The means. Comprised of hardware, software and connecting media, all subject to measurable laws of physics with predictable first-order physical effects. Effectiveness usually detectable and measurable. In-house technical skills adequate and staff rearrangements unnecessary.
- Information component—The purpose. Best managed by staff privy to the commanders desired end-state of any operation. Skills adequate in quality but not quantity—particularly at lower levels—and cross staff coordination needs muchcimprovement.
- Cognitive component—The results. Requires comprehensive understanding of the targeted human element. Does not yield easily to effects-based analysis. Results subject to unknown causal chains and unpredictable first, second and third order effects. Organic management and assessment skills limited, so best outsourced.
Why are we surprised by failure of efforts to integrate such disparate core capabilities as electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception and operations security and our inability to influence the perceptions, attitudes and behavior of both friend and foe?
Brig General Huba Wass de Czege, USA (Ret,) provides his answer in a sweeping and detailed assessment of IO in the November-December 2008 Military Review article titled “Rethinking IO.” He cites inherent flaws in understanding how IO fits in a comprehensive theory of war and faults fuzzy thinking among IO professionals who use pseudo-scientific terms such as “information effects” and “influence operations”. He does not believe that integration of core capabilities will constitute an independent IO “logical line of operations (LLO)” that can influence the behaviors of adversaries (and the populations that support them) with so-called information effects.” I interpret this, in my terms, to mean that information should be seen as but one critical element in any military operation and there is no such thing as an Information Operation.
In a section of his article titled Integration, Staff Oversight, and Necessary Organizational Changes, he expresses more concern over staff capability, the lack of a holistic approach to planning, more coherence between words and deeds, than he does to major organizational change. He says putting all IO tools under one staff element is an untenable action.
Perhaps the U.S. Army will accept the challenge from Brig. General Huba Wass de Czege to rethink IO, and that other military services follow suit. If words are important, then one minor change will recognize that while information is absolutely vital in virtually all operations, it is just one element in a combined arms offense. Information Operations (IO) becomes Information In Operations (IiO)
Col Alan D. Campen USAF (Ret.) authored The First Information War, was adjunct faculty at the NDU School of Information War and Strategy, and is a Contributing Editor to Signal Magazine. His website is www.cyberinfowar.com
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