Network-centric Warfare: An Idea in Good Currency
Over the past decade, the combined impact of change in the strategic environment and the development of network-enabling technologies have propelled proponents of network-centric warfare (NCW) into the mainstream of military thought. Although defining NCW remains problematic, advocates such as John Gartska, the Assistant Director for Concepts and Operations in the US Defense Department’s Office of Force Transformation, have argued that the term describes how a networked force fights. Gartska defines NCW as:
A robustly networked force [that] improves information sharing. Information sharing and collaboration enhance the quality of information and shared situational awareness. Shared situational awareness enables collaboration and self-synchronization, and enhances sustainability and speed of command.1
In many ways, NCW appears to be an idea that is driving policy formulation in several advanced military organisations, including the Australian Department of Defence. The philosopher Donald Schön would recognise NCW as being an ‘idea in good currency’.2 Ideas in good currency are powerful because policy-makers can win resources through the use of such ideas to shift the language of policy debate by establishing new vocabulary and syntax.
Schön goes on to argue that ideas in good currency change over time, are usually few in number and often lag well behind changing events.3 A society has only enough space to absorb a limited number of ideas. Because a social system is usually conservative in its structural, technological and conceptual dimensions, what precipitates ideational change is a disruptive event or sequence of events, which sets up a demand for new ideas. At this point, ideas already present in marginal areas of the society begin to penetrate into the mainstream and are diffused. As Schön puts it:
The [new] ideas become powerful as centres of policy debate and political conflict. They gain widespread acceptance through the efforts of those who push or ride them through the fields of force created by the interplay of interests and commitments... When the ideas are taken up by people already powerful in society this gives them a kind of legitimacy and completes their power to change public policy. After this, the ideas become an integral part of the conceptual dimension of the social system and appear, in retrospect, obvious.4
The purpose of this article is to show that the philosophies accompanying NCW technology will have their greatest impact on the sociology of Australian defence. It argues that the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) capacity to absorb, manage and integrate technological innovation will be the key step in making the transition to a network-enabled force. Networked warfare may be a new ‘idea in good currency’ but it must mature before it is in Schön’s words an ‘integral’ and ‘obvious’ part of the Department of Defence’s social system.
‘Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore’: NCW and organisational change
Philosophically, proponents of NCW believe that the power of technology can resolve uncertainty and so lift the age-old ‘fog of war’. Such a technocentric philosophy appeals to many of the ADF’s uniformed professionals because the idea that every problem has a mechanistic solution remains central to Australian military culture. As the leading historian of technology, Professor Elting E. Morison noted in 1966: ‘military organizations are societies built around and upon the prevailing weapon systems. Intuitively and quite correctly the military man feels that a change in weapons portends a change in the arrangement of this society’.5
Unfortunately, a technological philosophy ignores the reality that each new technical development redefines the connections between the various social components of the military and often demands a change in collective and individual behaviour. Focusing narrowly on technical innovation can inhibit an organisation’s ability to identify the corresponding social and educational changes. While many Australian military professionals profess a theoretical commitment to the human dimension of NCW, in practice, the organisational focus of strategy, policy and resource allocation continues to remain firmly fixed on resolving the technical issues of military change.
The movement towards NCW is overwhelmingly a technology-driven transformation. Various champions of NCW, notably Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski—until recently the Director of the US Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation—believe that the transition towards networked warfare represents a ‘paradigm shift’ for the profession of arms.6 Yet, the veracity of this claim depends on the ability of today’s military leaders to introduce and support a regime of change that is not only technical but also cultural in character.
US military operations in Afghanistan and in Iraq between 2001 and 2005 have shown how an advanced military force benefits from possessing increased connectivity between its combat arms. During the 2001–02 war in Afghanistan, the US Office of Force Transformation noted:
In Afghanistan, Special Operating Forces are lightly armed, but very well connected to networks. They know where they are in relation to other Special Operating Forces and they also know where the enemy is. Our fighting forces are themselves sensors and they are connected to weapons systems and platforms that are capable of delivering enormous firepower.7
Operations in Afghanistan conferred a degree of new credibility on networked warfare and, as a result, heightened the desire of the Australian Defence Organisation (ADO) to keep abreast of the technical developments in connectivity. However, as with all new ideas, there remains a persistent concern that, if the ADO does not manage the complex transition towards a networked force with holistic skill and dexterity, then Australian forces may be able to operate faster but not necessarily with greater capability. In 1854, the American writer, Henry Thoreau, noted that introducing technology without social change merely created a situation in which ‘inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are improved means to unimproved ends’.8
Technology and organisation: the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2004
The impact of technology on organisation is well demonstrated by the 2004 Iraqi prison scandal. In response to questioning from the US House Armed Services Committee on the treatment of Iraqi prisoners, the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, highlighted the challenges posed by widely available and connected modern technologies:
I wish I knew how you reach down into a criminal investigation when... it turns out to be something that is radioactive, something that has strategic impact in the world. We don’t have those procedures. They’ve never been designed. We’re functioning... with peacetime constraints, with legal requirements, in a wartime situation, in the Information Age... People are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when... they had not even arrived in the Pentagon.9
The innocent surprise expressed in the Secretary of Defense’s voice as he spoke these words seem odd for an individual who had worked hard for technological solutions to military problems. However, as he continued to speak, Rumsfeld seemed struck by the realisation that, in an organisational sense, the worst facet of the Iraqi prisoner scandal was the novelty of digital photography:
My worry today is that there’s some other procedure or some other habit that’s 20th century, that is normal process, ‘the way we’ve always done it’,... a peacetime approach to the world, and [then] there’s some other process that we haven’t discovered yet that needs to be modernized to [meet] the 21st century... in this case, for example, of digital cameras [sic].And trying to figure out what that is before it, too, causes something like this [the prison scandal]... is my nightmare.10
It is important to note that Rumsfeld’s nightmare was not about technology per se, but about its social impact on traditional organisational systems. In the Abu Ghraib scandal, commonly available networked digital technology placed on the World Wide Web outpaced the ability of established American legal and organisational practices to respond to a crisis. Once the photographs were aired globally in April 2004, their pervasive reality eclipsed the fact that Central Command (CENTCOM) had publicly addressed the abuse issue in a January 2004 press release. However, CENTCOM treated the photographs as an official criminal investigative matter rather than as an issue with explosive public relations and therefore, political, ramifications. As a result, when the photographs became publicly available, the senior levels of the Department of Defense were not adequately prepared to respond to the outcry from Congress and the American public.11 In short, 21st-century networked, digital technology simply short-circuited 20th-century organisational practice and the actions of a few soldiers undermined US government policy over Iraq.
The Abu Ghraib incident highlights the difficulties and complexities of force transformation and demonstrates that a technological focus is never enough. Among ADF military professionals, NCW is described as achieving ‘a greater level of situational awareness, coordination, and offensive potential than is currently the case’.12 Increased situational awareness is viewed as a technological phenomenon; yet, if the pace of fundamental organisational reform is neglected in favour of technology, then the likelihood of eventual failure in networking increases markedly. In a broader organisational sense, Rumsfeld’s ‘nightmare’ is perfectly valid. Just like Dorothy in Frank Baum’s famous Wizard of Oz, we, in the advanced militaries in general and in the ADF in particular, are ‘not in Kansas any more’.
Military systems as socio-technical networks
Networks are complex systems that, unlike hierarchies, thrive on connectivity, flattened command structures and ‘peer-to-peer’ nodes of communication.13 In large interdependent networks, a long chain-of-command dependency means that small failures can echo across a network. In the future, as network complexity increases, solutions to problems in one node are likely to require parallel adjustments to behaviour in other nodes. Hence, the strategic effect of the Iraqi prisoner images was to ‘gridlock’ the US diplomatic, administrative and military networks.
Node relationships within a network are constantly shifting in shape. As dependency and connectivity grow across a network, so the size and influence of existing nodes begins to lessen. The Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, has tacitly admitted this phenomenon. In a recent speech, he noted that ‘we [in the Army] are on the cusp of an era when every soldier will be an individual node in the networked battle group: a strategic private’.14 Effectively networks and instant connectivity now permit tactical actors to have strategic impact—as was the case in the Abu Ghraib crisis, when the actions of a few prison guards enveloped the White House in the ensuing scandal.
A utopian view of NCW is often a ‘clear fine day’ in which the commander can see all before him. Yet the reality may be ‘a pea soup fog’ in which no commander can act with any certainty. Networked technologies may reduce uncertainty, but they may also amplify uncertainty. Three scenarios are worth considering. First, while technology can deliver a greater quantity of accurate data, the decision loop involved might be so radically shortened that response time may be reduced to a bare minimum, thus affecting time for considered military judgment. Second, although technology may enable a potential strategic private to draw on an array of battlefield assets, he is likely to be increasingly disassociated from the results of his decentralised decision-making. Third, while technology promises a theoretical decentralisation of battle control, it offers senior commanders greater central direction of warfighting. In conditions of uncertainty, commanders might prefer centralisation of responsibility in a headquarters to decentralised control. In a fluid, decentralised battlespace in which mistakes can be magnified from the tactical to the strategic levels, cautious senior commanders may not wish to rely on decision-making by junior personnel.
The above scenarios reflect the difficult questions that NCW poses for Australian military professionals and defence policy-makers. Most of the problems emanating from networking are not technical or economic, but cultural and social, in character. Unfortunately, cultural and social issues are those that the ADF has the greatest difficulty in confronting and resolving. Unlike technological issues, cultural and social problems do not have clear-cut solutions. Increasingly, we must view the Department of Defence as a complex and interdependent socio-technical network if change is to be successfully implemented. If the Department adopts such a mental approach, then ADF planners will be in a better position to work towards creating the seamless force of 2020.
A socio-technical approach towards networking offers two major advantages. First, viewing the social and technical challenges of NCW as mutually dependent enables analysts to examine a broader range of problems. Second, a socio-technical approach to networking allows uniformed professionals and defence policy-makers to manage organisational issues in the context of an evolving learning system. At present, the hierarchical model of the ADF continues to operate on the central principle of ‘declared wisdom’—that is, knowledge and expertise are directly proportionate to the rank and status of individuals in the hierarchy. A social learning approach to networking would assist in a move toward a more inclusive ‘social learning model’—a model that seeks information, knowledge and experience regardless of positional status. A learning approach to organisational evolution would maximise the strengths of increased connectivity and interdependence.
According to defence industry, the ADF’s aspiration to be a network-enabled force positions it as an ‘astute second-phase early adopter of new technologies’—a position that is closer to the leading edge of technology.15 However, the corollary of such a position is that the ADF should also be at the forefront of continued cultural and social change. For the ADF, rich in history and tradition, these types of changes are likely to represent a significant challenge. It is unclear whether Australia’s military leaders and defence policy-makers have the ability to generate sustained changes to an organisational culture and create an ‘institutional architecture’ that allows innovation to flourish.16 As the godfather of NCW, Vice Admiral Cebrowski has remarked: ‘the inherent cultural changes [of force transformation] are the most difficult and protracted’.17
The Four Horsemen of Change
Military intellectual trends tend to reflect the social trends of the day and, in this respect, NCW is a clear reflection of the process of globalisation.18 Balancing the natural tension between the nature of war and the inclinations of civil society requires the military to manage the interactions between the four main ingredients of institutional change: technology, ideas, people and organisation.19 These are the four horsemen of change in any transition from an industrial-age to an information-age military.
The leaders of defence transformation tend to treat each horseman or area of change as separate and isolated. Yet, in reality, the combination of technology, ideas, people and organisation represents the best foundation for an operational view of change management with regard to the introduction of networking. Decisions taken in one area heighten or constrain the possibilities in the other three areas. In other words, like a cavalry charge, the four horsemen must move to the gallop in unison, coordinating their movements over time and space.
Technology
Of the four horsemen of change, technology may be described as being the first among equals. New technology is the key driver of capability growth in modern military organisations. Networked technologies open access to what is always rare in warfare—information—and the real challenge facing the ADF is to use the other three areas of ideas, people and organisation in a manner that capitalises on technological innovation. A fascination with technology alone is counterproductive in that it frequently leads to a narrow approach towards change that displaces a need for holistic capability as a strategic end. As one leading historian of military innovation, Alan Millet, has written:
Sheer technological innovation ... does not win wars. Instead, the interaction of technical change and organisational adaptation within realistic strategic assessment determines whether good ideas turn into real military capabilities.20
Ideas
A search for new ideas, for an asymmetric advantage, has become critical in many advanced military organisations. Yet ideas must be translated, absorbed and integrated within a relevant cultural context. Networking doctrine emphasises the need for a process of constant innovation and identifies two key capabilities as being an ability to produce new ideas, and organisational effectiveness in turning these ideas into practice. The ADF needs to transfer relevant ideas across the services in order to nurture them through research and analysis—to make them, in effect, ‘ideas in good currency’. When an idea and a real-world demand intersect and match, then change takes place.
In the Australian military, ideas are often divorced from systematisation through doctrine production. It is insufficient to insert ideas such as multidimensional manoeuvre or the notion of a seamless force into a doctrinal publication in the hope that organisational change will occur. The promotion of ideas requires persistent effort to align thought to action. In the Department of Defence there is sometimes a tendency for high-level concept development to stop once an idea has been developed. Yet, in innovation, the success of ideas depends on their transmission and interaction with technology, people and organisation.
People
Central to successful institutional change is an investment in human capital. The human dimension of transformation is usually rhetorically acknowledged at the expense of practical reform of personnel practices. Yet if technology is to be implemented successfully, then personnel policies require significant adjustment. Refining the bond between people and technology is a critical part of NCW.
To date, the most obvious expression of the Defence Department’s interest in the bond between technology and people has been centred on the danger of ‘information overload’ on military commanders and their staffs. The challenges of networked technology on military theory and practice are potentially far-reaching, especially in the areas of hierarchy, leadership and combat organisation. Of the four horsemen of change, the human dimension is the most complex and difficult to influence. There is a need to concentrate greater effort and resources on reforming personnel systems in order to deal with the impact of network-enabling technology. Unfortunately, the ADF has a long history of pursuing short-term human resource maintenance rather than investing in a long-term human resource strategy.
Organisation
Organisation helps to promote strategic change in three ways. First, organisation is essential for specialist knowledge and skills. Second, organisation is a system of social patterns and practices that are as much cultural as functional. Third, it represents a system of processes for sharing resources and resolving conflicts between functional groups within a bureaucracy.21 Combined, these three manifestations of organisation define the social composition of the ADF. Rapid technological change involving networking technologies has the potential to alter the prevailing social order within both military and civil hierarchies. Such alteration is of central concern to the ADF because the institutional history of its constituent single services (Army Navy and Air Force) is a wellspring of morale, ethics, resilience and cohesion on operations. The organisational character of the armed forces is at once a source of capability and an instrument for change.
Culture as the Enemy of Innovation
The American cultural commentator, Neil Postman, argues that all change is a battle between new and old ideologies.22 In contrast, some historians of military revolution have put forward a ‘punctuated equilibrium evolution’ theory to explain change. This is a pattern of change drawn from the pioneering work of evolutionary biologists such as Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould.23 Punctuated equilibrium theory, as used by military historians, postulates that the history of Western military institutions generally involves periods of violent change, followed by periods of relative calm in which armies have adapted to major changes in their environment.24 Applied to organisational cultures, the punctuated equilibrium theory is useful in trying to understand why change embraces both spurs of rapid change and periods of apparent stability or inertia.
In assessing the process of change in the ADF, it is important to understand that, in terms of punctuated equilibrium evolution, any process of transition is mediated by an ADF that is in essence a federation of military subcultures represented by the single services. Each service culture has a different attitude towards technology and change. These different attitudes are apparent in popular adages such as ‘the Navy and the Air Force man the equipment but the Army equips the man’. All new technology represents a challenge to an existing social order and implies gain for some constituencies and loss for others alongside an intra-organisational competition for resources and status. As a result, any organisation contemplating transformation must decide on the internal ground rules against which innovation will be considered and the speed at which it will be implemented. The general conservatism of institutions means that change is usually incremental rather than radical in character.
There are two co-evolving patterns of change within the ADF: a knowledge-based pattern and a decision-based pattern. The first argues that, in order to ensure capability, the ADF must position itself as close to the leading edge of new technology as possible. In contrast, a decision-based pattern of change is political, social and cultural in its imperatives, and seeks to ensure the continuity and viability of the institution by lessening disruption through incremental adjustments.
It is important to note that the culture of any institution tends to embody history and as such is the enemy of innovation. As Niccolo Machiavelli put it in his famous treatise, The Prince, written in 1513:
There is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order. The lukewarmness arises partly from the fear of their adversaries who have the law in their favour; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have actual experience of it.25
Conclusion
The Australian military’s NCW strategy is aimed at creating the seamless force described in Force 2020. The characteristics of NCW—speed, precision, knowledge and innovation—are all reflective of the process of globalisation and its unprecedented levels of connectivity.26 It is connectivity that is challenging long-held assumptions about power and culture, and the social architecture of organisations.
The ADF understands that there will be consequences for doctrine, organisation and training stemming from the realisation of greater connectivity. However, the Department of Defence, as a whole, may have underestimated the speed and depth of the response needed to move towards new organisational norms. For example, a recent Strategic Workforce Planning Review stated:
The Review scanned future technology developments but was unable to identify a potential paradigm shift in Defence capability before 2020. The most prominent trend is the evolution of the information environment. We believe that the workforce implications of emerging technologies will be manageable with improved planning and implementation.27
The review goes on to suggest that Australian defence planners may have between ten and fifteen years to prepare personnel for the impact of innovation.28 Since the results of networked technologies are likely to have their greatest impact on the sociology of military organisations, the greatest challenges that the ADF will face are likely to be cultural, in the form of introducing changes in thinking and behaviour. Australian military innovation is likely to be defined by its human ability to respond to technology’s impact on organisational structure. Accordingly, in order to achieve success, Australian defence planners will be compelled to look closely at personnel policies and human resource questions if they are to manage a transformation from an industrial-age force towards an information-age networked force.
Finally, the character of military institutions is perhaps the key factor in any attempt to absorb new technologies. Institutions provide continuity and security for the activities of their members and, because they are human, are not easily changed with rapidity. Finally, Australian defence policy-makers must grasp the reality that technology is only one source of strength in a military arsenal. True military capability stems from a holistic appreciation of organisational power that is simultaneously technical, organisational and human in character. The real challenge, then, that NCW poses for the Australian Department of Defence is that of harmonising the different components of its institutional capacity in a way that successfully absorbs the new ideas and techniques that are likely to be vital in 21st-century warfare.
Endnotes
1 John Gartska quoted in D. S. Onley, ‘Net-centric approach proven in Iraq’, Government Computer News, vol. 23, no. 10, 5 March 2004, <www.oft.osd.mil/library/library_files/article_366_GOVERNMENT%20COMPUTER…;. The Australian Defence Force Doctrine Publication–D.3.1—Enabling Future Warfighting: Network Centric Warfare, 1st edn, states that NCW is an evolving doctrine in the ADF’s concept development process, and ‘the aim is to refine these ideas through experimentation and analysis over the coming years’.
2 D. A. Schön, Beyond the Stable State, Temple Smith, London, 1971, p. 123.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., p. 128.
5 Elting E. Morison, Men, Machines and Modern Times, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1966, p. 36.
6 Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski and John Garstka, ‘Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future’, US Naval Institute Proceedings, January 1998, <www.usni.org/Proceedings/Articles98/PROcebrowski.htm>.
7 Cited by John Garstka in a Network-centric Warfare presentation in Canberra, 23 October 2002.
8 Henry Thoreau, Walden,Koneman, Köln, 1854 (1996 edn), p. 49.
9 Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, ‘Testimony to The House Armed Services Committee Hearing on the Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners’, 7 May 2004. Summary in the Washington Post, 8 May 2004.
10 Ibid.
11 R. Schlesinger, Final Report of the Independent Panel to Review DoD Detention Operations, US Government Printer, Washington DC, August 2004, p. 13.
12 Department of Defence, Force 2020, Public Affairs and Corporate Communications, Canberra, June 2002, p. 19.
13 See K. Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Ways the Network Economy is Changing Everything,Fourth Estate Limited, London, 1998.
14 Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, ‘Towards the Hardened and Networked Army’, Australian Army Journal,Winter 2004, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 35. Emphasis added.
15 A senior executive in Australian Defence Industry made this observation during an interview with the author.
16 N. Jans, with J. Harte, Once Were Warriors: Leadership, Culture and Organisational Change in the Australian Defence Organisation, Leadership Papers 3, Centre for Command Leadership and Management Studies, Australian Defence College, Canberra, 2003, p. 13.
17 Cebrowski and Garstka, ‘Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future’.
18 Jeremy Black, War: Past, Present and Future, St Martin’s Press, New York, 2000, p. 267.
19 This approach towards transformation is an amalgam of Snooks conceptualisation of dynamic change in society and the author’s practical experience of change management in Defence and the ADF. See Graeme Snooks, The Dynamic Society: Exploring the Sources of Global Change, Routledge, London, 1996.
20 Alan R. Millet, ‘Patterns of Military Innovation in the Interwar Period’, in Williamson Murray and Alan R. Millet (eds), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 368.
21 See Nick Jans with David Schmidtchen, The Real C-Cubed: Culture, Careers and Climate and How they Affect Capability, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 143. Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, 2002.
22 Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Vintage Books, New York, p. 16.
23 Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould, ‘Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism’, in T. J. Schopf (ed.), Models in Paleobiology, Freeman Cooper, San Francisco, 1972.
24 See Clifford J. Rogers, ‘The Military Revolution of the Hundred Years War, in Clifford J. Rogers (ed.), The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1995, pp. 76–7; and Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox, ‘Thinking about Revolutions in Warfare’, in MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray (eds), The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, p. 6.
25 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, translated and introduced by C. Bull, Penguin Books, London, 1995.
26 Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Harper Collins, London, 2000.
27 Department of Defence, Report of the Strategic Workforce Planning Review, Defence Publishing Service, Canberra, 2003, p.xiv.
28 Ibid., p. 43.
