Joint Information Operations: The Road Ahead
Abstract
This article discusses Joint Information Operations in the light of the January 2006 release into the public domain of the United States Department of Defense’ (US DoD) Information Operations Roadmap dated 30 October 2003.1 It considers how Information Operations (IO) has and is evolving in the West with particular reference to US IO policy based on the disclosure of this previously ‘SECRET NOFORN’ (No Foreigners) classified document.
A Road Well Travelled
By 2006, Information Operations could no longer be considered a new concept. During the 1990s, Western nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and coalitions executed IO with mixed success in countries as diverse as the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and East Timor. By the mid-1990s, the United States had established the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center in San Antonio, Texas—affectionately known as the ‘Juicy 2C’, it had formerly been called the Joint Electronic Warfare Center. In 1999, the author was witness to its transformation into the Joint Information Operations Center. Almost simultaneously (and quite coincidentally), the United Kingdom stood up its Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence.
Australia led the international Information Operations community in the quality of its comprehensive IO doctrine (Australian Defence Doctrine Publication 3. 13 Information Operations) published earlier in 2002. That year also saw NATO in protracted discussions regarding their original IO policy document. Militaries expect to see policy precede doctrine and tactics, techniques and procedures to follow on from doctrine. Yet, the evolution of Joint Information Operations in the West since the 1990s shows that, in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, there was no disciplined, logical development. For many ‘IO warriors’, the vast majority of whom are American, the most significant was US Joint Publication 3-13, Joint Doctrine for Information Operations, published in October 1998. Well conceived, but overly simplistic—particularly in relation to command relationships and the control of IO—this document subsequently hampered the effective development of Joint Information Operations in the United States. It provided inadequate direction for IO staffs and described Information Operations principles in insufficient detail. Fortunately, the innovative character and independent spirit of the Australian Defence Force (ADF)’s Information Operations doctrine writers ensured they avoided making the same mistakes when it came to releasing its Australian Defence Doctrine publications.
Among Western-style democracies, the United States, United Kingdom and Australia are the most advanced national proponents of integrating Information Operations into operations. With the assistance of the United States and United Kingdom, NATO too has shown itself able to employ effectively rudimentary Information Operations in several peace enforcement and peacekeeping operations well in advance of written doctrine.2 Surprisingly, as the only nations that supplied forces resulting in a regime change in Iraq, the United States, United Kingdom and Australia are still unable to agree about a definition and the basic principles of Information Operations. Disparate organisations, such as NATO with twenty-six countries and the Multinational Planning Augmentation Team in our own region, have reached agreement about policy, doctrines, and standard operating procedures for Information Operations. The US military, however, subject as it is to a competitive inter-Service environment and influenced by the interagency politics of central government, has found agreement on what Information Operations actually is very difficult to achieve. As a result, even the founding members of the US-led ‘Coalition of the Willing’ failed to harness the full potential of Information Operations in Iraq. Constraints within each nation, although less so in the United Kingdom, also hamper unilateral planning and the execution of Joint Information Operations.
There is, however, high-level agreement of IO’s potential. After Kosovo, Admiral Ellis, USN (then the Commander-in-Chief, US Naval Forces, Europe, and Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces, Southern Europe) stated that, ‘properly executed, IO could have halved the length of the campaign’.3 General Cosgrove, when he was the Commander of the International Force East Timor, noted ‘when this is over it will be asked what is different between this operation and others. One of those things will be that we conducted IO’.4 This senior recognition of Information Operations and its potential benefits has been reflected by substantial investment, especially in staff requirement terms, in the United States and, to a lesser but still notable degree in the United Kingdom. The Australian doctrinal definition of Information Operations by 2002 was ‘the coordination of information effects to influence the decision-making and actions of a target audience, and to protect and enhance our decision-making and actions in support of national interests.’ Yet, the ADO (Australian Defence Organisation) has preferred to invest the bare minimum in Information Operations whilst still anticipating, and admittedly on occasion gaining, high-yield results. The keywords in Australia’s definition are: ‘coordination’, ‘effects’, ‘influence’, ‘target’, ‘protect’ and ‘national. The raison d’être for Information Operations is to better coordinate our efforts so as to influence a target audience or protect our own decision-making processes for the benefit of Australia. Simply put, the ADF definition exemplifies a commonsense approach in defining Information Operations, and was similar, in terms of affecting the decision-making process, to that of Canada, the United Kingdom and NATO. The approach did not, however, reflect the 1998 US joint definition which placed a focus on information and information systems rather than on people.
The United States and the Development of IO
Understanding the US position on Information Operations is important for the ADO. The influence of US concepts and doctrine in coalitions is often all-pervasive and it is essential to analyse their approach to any warfare discipline if we are to work successfully together and continue to provide sought-after ‘niche’ capabilities. During the First Gulf War of 1991, the US military recognised the advantages of harmonising and coordinating those elements of warfare which were able to affect information gathered from both friendly and hostile sources. Although a new concept emerged, described as ‘Command and Control Warfare’ (C2W), it was simply about undertaking warfare in a more efficient, coordinated and focused manner. If alive today, Sun Tzu would no doubt recognise the principles involved and suspect plagiarism. Yet C2W was quickly overtaken by newer buzz phrases and concepts, including Information Warfare, Information Superiority and Information Operations, although the principles remain sound.
Essentially, C2W sought ‘to deny information to, influence, degrade, or destroy adversary C2 capabilities while protecting friendly C2 capabilities against such actions’.5 It was used to best effect during the First Gulf War in 1991 when, during the ‘left hook’ manoeuvre, all the elements of C2W (Military Deception, Psychological Operations (PSYOP), Operations Security, Electronic Warfare (EW), and Physical Destruction) were employed in an integrated manner to devastating effect, bypassing Iraq’s defensive positions. The United States had recognised that powerful synergies were to be gained by coordinating joint assets more effectively, yet all too soon one of the weaknesses of the US military system became apparent. ‘Rice bowl’ issues between different military and Service communities hampered the development of C2W and, until recently, had a similar effect on the development of Information Operations. The Army’s PSYOP group was protective of its direct access to the force commander and vested interests within the EW community and other agencies were not prepared to accept a loss of control and influence in their own areas of specialisation. In addition, the newly-formed Joint C2W staffs in the combatant commands were perceived—wrongly in some Headquarters (HQ), perhaps rightly in others—to be trying to control every aspect of operations. As C2W training and knowledge was limited and still evolving, it is understandable that consistent success in the employment of C2W was never going to be achieved as efficiently or quickly as it might have been. Despite these problems, the benefits of the concept were recognised and the evolution continued as Information Warfare emerged, essentially as C2W conducted in a crisis environment.
However, by the late 1990s peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations were being conducted with less emphasis on physical destruction and more on influencing ‘hearts and minds’. This led to the recognition that, in peacetime, there was also the requirement to provide commanders with a broader information advantage and C2W and Information Warfare transformed into Information Operations. In the United States, C2W had been the responsibility of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but subsequent reorganisations saw the US Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) (the former US Atlantic Command), US Space Command, and then US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) being given the lead responsibility for Information Operations. To a degree, this reflected the confusion that had for several years hampered the practice and development of Information Operations in the United States. Among the many stakeholders in Joint Information Operations, none was able to persuade the rest where the boundaries of Information Operations should be drawn, nor how Information Operations ought to fit into the command and control chain. Some stakeholders were content to misinterpret or reinterpret the Joint Information Operations Doctrine. This has not been an issue for either the United Kingdom or Australia, which have fewer ‘rice bowls’ to protect in their smaller and more compact defence forces.
As noted earlier, the Joint Information Operations Center replaced the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center (which had earlier replaced the Joint Electronic Warfare Center). Although the principles of C2W remain valid, in the United States there were no longer Joint Centers for either C2W or EW.6 This was unfortunate because both C2W and Joint EW had a strong military focus, whereas Information Operations has had, until recently, a much broader vision, supporting areas well beyond traditional military boundaries. The US DoD had somewhat briefly come to view C2W as a subset of Information Warfare employed in operations that specifically attack or defend the Command and Control target set. Now, however, with the arrival of the Roadmap and the supporting 2006 reiteration of Joint Publication 3-13, both C2W and Information Warfare have been removed from the US Information Operations lexicon. Is this perhaps an accurate indication of the speed of concept development to trashcan in modern warfare doctrine development?
Information Operations has often lacked discipline, focus and rigour in both planning and execution in national, bilateral and coalition operations. Transforming a concept into reality in any field will raise unanticipated issues. There are still many problems and inconsistencies facing Information Operations that have yet to be addressed effectively. From a basic lack of coordination in areas such as Information Operations staff complements in the US Combatant Commands, and also incidentally in the ADF, through an absence of commonality of definitions, to measuring the effectiveness of Information Operations tasks designed to achieve targeted effects, Information Operations has yet to achieve maturity.
Maybe this is because Information Operations seemed to become so all-encompassing. From the five capabilities envisaged by C2W, Information Operations grew to employ a dozen or more, depending on which national doctrine one examines. To the original five C2W pillars, the United States added in 1998: Public Affairs, Civil Affairs, Computer Network Operations (CNO), counter propaganda, and several others. In Australia there are 14 ‘information elements’ or tools available to the Information Operations planner. This is not to say that Information Operations uses the entire range of assets or effect-providers all of the time. For example, in peacetime it makes good sense to protect Defence Information Infrastructure 24/7/365, but an Information Operations plan is not necessarily required to achieve that protection. However, if hostile intelligence services are known to be trying to gain certain access or information in the Defence Information Infrastructure, it makes sense to develop a defensive Information Operations plan. Such a plan would coordinate relevant elements such as information security, physical security, communications security, Computer Network Defence, Operations Security, network management, counterintelligence and, perhaps, Public Affairs in order to deter the threat.
A Roadmap for IO
In 2001, the US Quadrennial Defense Review Report identified IO as one of six critical operational goals that would focus transformation efforts within the US DoD.7 The Defense Planning Guidance for the financial years 2004–2009 supported the concept of Information Operations as a core capability of future forces.8
Thanks to the US Freedom of Information Act, it is now possible to analyse the declassified sections of the 2003 Information Operations Roadmap (‘the Roadmap’) and view how the United States intends to develop Information Operations and rectify some of the issues that have dogged its progress as a ‘silver bullet’. This document comes closest to articulating exactly what the United States wants to achieve with Information Operations; its main objective being that IO will become a core competency in the US military so as to enable the United States to dominate the information spectrum. This means IO will be on a par with air, ground, maritime and special operations.
The US Joint Staff realised in the mid-1990s that well-planned Information Operations can provide an effective lead for whole-of-government and multinational interagency planning. To integrate IO effectively into a National Effects Based Approach (NEBA), and to achieve this either independently or within a small coalition of coordinated NEBAs, is a worthy aim. A National Effects Based Approach campaign would employ all appropriate national elements of power to avoid the development, or subsequent escalation, of a crisis or conflict. It would have the potential to provide governments with disproportionate benefits in economic terms, as well as protecting its citizens and minimising risks to its armed forces. The Roadmap recognised the value of this holistic approach. Due to the three-year gap between authorship and release, many of the fifty-plus recommendations contained in the Roadmap may by now have been executed. It lists the purpose of Information Operations as follows:
- To alter decisions and behaviour in order to support our own objectives by influencing the will of selected target audiences;
- To degrade (potential or actual) adversary capabilities by exploiting information and information systems;
- To achieve and maintain our own Information Superiority by protecting our own decision makers and systems;
- To prevent adversary IO from having an effect on our own will and capabilities by anticipating and neutralising the effects of adversary IO.9
The first two are offensive or, in more politically correct terms, ‘proactive’ in nature. Surprisingly, readers of the ADO’s recent Information Superiority Concept10 will find no mention of developing any proactive capabilities to affect an adversary’s access to information.11 The US DoD sees Information Operations very much as a military discipline, despite there being no reference to the military in those purposes described in the Roadmap. This is perhaps a tacit recognition that, in the Information Age, there is effectively no gap between information effects at either end of the food chain (i.e., what a President or Prime Minister says and what a soldier does as a result). Everything between the two is part of a supporting process enabling the military to accurately execute the politician’s demands. Each level of command—strategic, operational and tactical—is blurred at the edges with regard to information effects. Political sensitivities have caused Information Operations conducted at the strategic level to be called by different names: in the United States it is ‘Strategic Communications’; in the United Kingdom, the ‘Information Campaign’ or ‘Information Strategy’; and in Australia, ‘Shaping and Influencing’. In conceptual transformation terms, it provides the information component of a National Effects Based Approach.
During the 2003 Iraq War, the image of US service personnel placing the Stars and Stripes over the head of a statue of Saddam Hussein was transmitted instantaneously around the world. Indeed, the action of one individual in a tactical environment can have immediate strategic implications.12 Moreover, tactical actions will continue to have disproportionate strategic effects, especially if they are recorded by the media. A government’s inability to control access to ‘open source’ information, together with the volume and speed of transmission, means that military IO planners at one level must consider the impact of effects on all other levels (including secondary and tertiary, and intended and unintended effects). This is no simple task. With experience, it is clear that Information Operations are most effective if firstly integrated with, and then employed in support of, whole-of-government activities. Information Operations may include, and Strategic Communications will include, effects intended to influence government decision-makers and their policies at the strategic level. Yet, military personnel are more comfortable when IO is targeted to exert influence at the operational and tactical military levels. The public servants in the major government departments responsible for coordinating Strategic Communications must ensure that their efforts are synchronised with those effects being designed by military IO planners at the lower echelons, and vice versa. Mindsets within government departments will require adjustment, and solutions devised to best determine how to integrate Information Operations into those National Effects Based Approach or National Effects Based Approaches that incorporate multinational and multiagency planning. The Roadmap indicates the willingness of the US DoD to embrace such whole-of-government planning.
Then–US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally approved the Roadmap and directed the Services, Combatant Commanders and US DoD agencies to support fully its implementation. By issuing the Roadmap five years after the Joint Information Operations doctrine, and before the publication of any Joint Information Operations tactics, techniques and procedures, the United States is seeking to redefine (or more clearly define) IO by clarifying who has authority for Information Operations and by placing clear boundaries on its execution. At the same time, the US DoD wants to delegate maximum possible authority to its regional Combatant Commanders to plan and execute Information Operations and include it comprehensively into the contingency planning of all Joint HQ. As such, Information Operations are to be integrated into new operational concepts and included in training and exercises.
In order to achieve its objectives, the Roadmap recognised that there were force development issues that would require: the support of all four-star Combatant Commanders; a streamlined organisational system; well-defined C2 relationships; and a trained and educated Information Operations career force, with joint programs to develop dedicated Information Operations capabilities. The Roadmap identified three areas requiring immediate action: fighting the net, improving PSYOP, and improving network and electro-magnetic attack capability.13
Fighting the Net
The United States is in the process of building an information-centric force. The US military, more often than not, now views a network as the operational centre of gravity. The Roadmap recognises the vulnerability in networks and recommends remedial actions such as layered defence in depth to preserve network security, maintain decision superiority, and preserve warfighting capability. One of the Roadmap recommendations is for the US DoD to implement a strategy for defending its networks, including:
- robust network defence infrastructures; networks that slow down and channel attackers;
- vertical and horizontal situational awareness and configuration management for effective C2 of defensive operations;
- a Computer Network Defence concept of operations allowing varied defensive postures; and
- the ability to maintain critical network functionality whilst reconstitution operations are ongoing.
Improving PSYOP
The Roadmap recognised that PSYOP needed to be improved—that themes and messages employed in a PSYOP campaign must be consistent with the broader national security objectives and with national-level themes and messages. This reflected the themes adopted by their closest allies several years before. In other words, PSYOP professionals had to learn how best to support public diplomacy efforts. One example of this might be using PSYOP to support statements made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visits to an operational theatre.
The Roadmap stressed that PSYOP must refocus on adversary decision-making processes well in advance so as to support aggressive behaviour modification in time of conflict. Of course, PSYOP products need to be based on an in-depth knowledge of their audience’s decision-making processes, must be of high quality, and be capable of rapid dissemination in the area of operations.
In the United States, PSYOP is restricted from targeting American domestic audiences, US military personnel, and US news agencies and outlets. However, information intended for foreign audiences is increasingly likely to reach US domestic audiences, as do public diplomatic statements. The Roadmap noted that it is essential for policy differences between different government departments and agencies to be resolved where they affect themes and messages. This may be easier said than done.
The Roadmap likely directs that Combatant Commanders be given new rules of engagement for some specialist elements of PSYOP and, by now, they will certainly have approval authority for those PSYOP products that do not contain substantial political or strategic content or implications. In the past, US PSYOP products often had to be approved at an unrealistically high political level. This has fortunately not been the case in Australia. Whilst the media and media reactions will always have a large part to play in the success of retaining national support for operations, Western politicians cannot demand their media support the party line, nor can military planners expect them to do so. The media will always be there as a part of our strategic environment and be looking to fill an information vacuum. A classic example of how not to coordinate PSYOP and Public Affairs activities occurred in 2005 when US PSYOP personnel allegedly burnt Muslim corpses in Afghanistan and were permitted to speak freely to media representatives who were, rather surprisingly, in the same location at the same time.14
The US, UK and Australian militaries have differing relationships with their respective Public Affairs staffs. However, as their credibility depends on accuracy and consistency, all seek to never deceive the media. Information Operations and Public Affairs staffs must coordinate in order to both disseminate specific themes and messages to our adversaries and to defend our own commanders. This is not an immoral or underhanded approach—but merely commonsense—and reflects the activities of Western politicians towards their constituent base. The key for IO is choosing to release information to the media on one’s own terms, for example as regards the timing and quantity of material released. In a National Effects Based Approach, politicians, diplomats and senior officers must be informed of the essential elements of the plan, namely to stay ‘on message’ and ‘on time’. General Colin Powell, in the lead-up to the First Gulf War in 1991, was convinced that Saddam Hussein was unintentionally receiving mixed and confusing messages from the White House.15 A Strategic Communications Plan16 should help avoid such damage and support targeted effects.
Improving Network and Electro-Magnetic Attack Capability
When the Roadmap was published in 2003, it noted that, when implemented, its recommendations would effectively jump-start a rapid improvement in Computer Network Attack (CNA) capability. It foresaw a robust offensive suite, to include a full range of electronic and CNA capabilities, with increased reliability through improved C2, assurance testing and refined tactics and procedures. To prevail in an information-centric environment, the United States requires its forces to dominate the electro-magnetic spectrum with attack capabilities. Reading between the lines of the declassified SECRET NOFORN Information Operations Roadmap is not easy and several paragraphs relating to CNA have been deleted in their entirety. However, one can see that USSTRATCOM in Omaha, Nebraska—traditionally the HQ for intercontinental ballistic missile targeting—has been given command of CNA forces.17 The Roadmap requires the United States to develop a common understanding of the ‘CNA Battlefield’. CNA can be executed at the tactical, operational or strategic level and, as noted earlier, the separation between the three can be blurred for information effect. Sometimes, tactical means of access (for example by special forces or a human intelligence asset attacking a computer server directly) might enable strategic targeting and vice versa. It appears that Combatant Commanders such as United States Pacific Command have been delegated authority to employ ‘all CNA weapons except those that entail high risk of knowledge transfer to enemies’.18 The Roadmap definitely recommended that the Combatant Commanders be delegated specific CNA targets.
The Roadmap also recommended a legal review for the use of CNA. The US DoD sought a decision on what constituted a ‘use of force’ when undertaking or responding to CNA. A legal review is required to determine what level of data or operating system constitutes an attack, to clarify which actions may be taken in self defence and whether an action is an attack or an intelligence collection operation to exploit a network rather than degrade or destroy it. Such a review would also determine the legality of using a third party’s network as an unwitting host to deliver an attack and what level of certainty about the origin of an attack may be required before the United States can respond in kind. In the Roadmap, the US DoD also required a legal regime to respond separately to domestic and foreign sources of CNA and exploit powers available in the US Patriot Act 2001 and Homeland Security Act 2002.
The Roadmap anticipates that USSTRATCOM will recommend three category groups to determine how the use of CNA weapons will be authorised. It is noteworthy that the administration has clearly accepted CNA to be a weapon, rather than a tool, asset, or equipment. The CNA Weapon Categories envisaged by the Roadmap in 2003 were:
Category I. Capabilities allocated to Combatant Commanders.
Category II. Capabilities pre-allocated to an Operations Plan.
Category III. Capabilities requiring Secretary of Defense/President approval.19
Perhaps those with the least controversial effects, such as an untraceable attack on a known computer hacker, will be in the first category, and its execution approved by the Regional Combatant Commander. The ramifications of an attack being detected and more importantly traced back to the US Government may, combined with the importance of the target and associated collateral effects, mean that a CNA capability is allocated to the third category. As for the deployment of any weapon, it is essential to have a high degree of confidence in its success and intended effect. The Roadmap contains the requirement for an integrated test range to increase confidence in CNA and better assure predictable outcomes. This facility will comprise an integrated network to support exercises, testing and the development of CNA, EW and other Information Operations capabilities. This network will clearly need to be capable of accurately simulating a potential adversary’s network—a type of wargaming trainer for cyber warfare.
The Unified Command Plan in 2002 stated that USSTRATCOM’s role in Information Operations should include supporting the Combatant Commanders for planning and USSTRATCOM was specifically assigned responsibility for integrating and coordinating Information Operations that cross geographic areas of responsibility or cross Information Operations core capabilities.20 In theory therefore, military CNA/EW/PSYOP and so forth, which target a terrorist group operating globally, would be coordinated by USSTRATCOM. Meanwhile, there are over fifty recommendations in the Roadmap, one of which is ‘to empower STRATCOM to undertake critical precursor activities for successful Information Operations planning and execution’.21 Therefore USSTRATCOM has a key role to play if Information Operations in the United States is to reach its maximum potential. Clearly the Roadmap gave the Nebraska HQ the authority to be proactive in peacetime and conduct forward planning for Information Operations.
A Fork in the Road or a U-Turn?
The Roadmap considers there to be three broad Information Operations functions, five integrated IO core capabilities and supporting capabilities. The functions are:
- to deter, discourage, dissuade and direct an adversary in order to disrupt his unity of command and purpose;
- to protect US plans and misdirect those of an adversary, allowing the United States to mass its effects to maximum advantage while the adversary expends resources to little effect; and
- to control adversary communications and networks and protect US systems, thereby crippling an adversary’s ability to direct an organised defence whilst preserving US command and control.22
All of these depend on early preparation of the Information Operations battlespace through intelligence, surveillance and forward planning, including considerable research in human factors analysis. The new ‘core capabilities’ of Information Operations are identical to the old pillars of C2W except that CNO have replaced Physical Destruction. As the US published this Roadmap seven and a half years after its C2W Joint Doctrine, it is very much a case of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.23 Like any core military competency, Information Operations cannot be successfully executed without diverse supporting and related capabilities. From a C2 perspective, there is the recognition in the Roadmap that supporting capabilities serve core competencies aside from Information Operations. Public Affairs and Civil Military Operations are seen as complementary to help keep Information Operations ‘on message’, and the Roadmap redefines Information Operations as
the integrated employment of the core capabilities of EW, CNO, PSYOP, Military Deception and Operations Security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision-making while protecting our own.24
So by 2003, we observed the United States freely admitting (although not intended for public or foreign consumption) that following two Gulf Wars, the Balkans conflict and various other operations during the 1990s, the Services, Combatant Commands and agencies had no common understanding of Information Operations. They did not uniformly equip and train for Information Operations or adequately develop IO requirement generation. As a result, Information Operations were not fully integrated into plans and orders.
The Roadmap states three reasons why Information Operations have been narrowed to five core capabilities. All the capabilities are operational in a direct and immediate sense—they achieve critical operational effects or prevent the adversary from doing so. The Roadmap also noted that the capabilities are interdependent and need increasingly to be integrated in order to achieve the desired effect. Of course, this will depend upon the operation, the Commander’s intent and the area of operations. (For example, in the Solomon Islands, it is unlikely that there would have been a requirement for CNO or military deception). Finally, these capabilities define those which the Services are expected to organise, train, equip and provide to the Combatant Commanders.
The previously broad conceptualisation of Information Operations is considered by the United States to dilute its ability to focus on decision-making processes. However, Australia and the United Kingdom may be as unlikely to follow this narrow Roadmap perspective as they were to follow the original US Joint Doctrine for Information Operations. They can still be expected to continue to use all tools available to them to conduct Information Operations and, at the strategic level, to support their Shaping and Influencing/Information Campaigns. Whether five Information Operations capabilities or a dozen are to be employed, accurate Information Operations planning and execution will require a breadth and depth of specialist support and expertise. For example, access to a legal officer with a grasp of a commander’s awareness of the limits on rules of engagement and knowledge of international law is essential for any Information Operations planning effort.
Highway or Interstate
One of the weaknesses recognised by the United States has led to the recommendation to establish an Information Operations career force with two categories: IO planners and IO capability specialists. In fact the US Air Force had already anticipated this requirement and 7 per cent of all officers between major and colonel were in the US Air Force Information Operations stream by 2001. Some deeply ingrained cultural norms will have to change as isolated communities of personnel such as PSYOP specialists come to consider themselves primarily as Information Operations personnel. This is not something that the United Kingdom and Australia seem prepared to do or indeed recognise the need for. Their preference is to train general staff officers on short Information Operations courses and then employ them in IO-specific staff positions whilst they consolidate and employ their knowledge. This solution only works providing there is adequate quality of training and provision of sufficient IO-trained staff and designated HQ Information Operations staff positions. Without these essentials, it is unrealistic to expect the ADF to be effective in planning and executing Information Operations in peace or war at any level of command.25
Another Roadmap recommendation concerned intelligence support to Information Operations. Although small, the United Kingdom has led the Western world in this field with a substantial number of intelligence staff dedicated to supporting Information Operations in such fields as human factors analysis, infrastructure analysis, target systems analysis and system of systems analysis. The United States has now also recognised that commanders need incisive and detailed intelligence support to allow them to make an educated choice between the use of conventional kinetic weapons and non-kinetic options that Information Operations may provide. To date, Australia has been reluctant to follow the UK example, and within the ADO’s smaller intelligence community there remain significant changes to be made if Information Operations planners are to be provided optimal rather than ad hoc intelligence support.
Information Operations have now been tested in conflict, peace enforcement and peacekeeping operations, and in national, bilateral and coalition environments. Information Operations is a proven (if still fledgling) military discipline, and one that is now recognised by the United States as a ‘core war-fighting capability’. However, before publication of the Roadmap, Information Operations were in danger of being overwhelmed by newer concepts developed within the US-driven construct of ‘Transformation’. Since the United States identified the need to transform its forces, transformation has become a growth industry. Network-centric warfare, Information Superiority, Effects-based Operations (EBO), National Effects Based Approach and other concepts and terms sounded a cacophony, distracting Western militaries from the logical goal of first realising the heady potential of a concept already at least a decade old, yet one still waiting to be effectively implemented. Indeed, one might therefore question why a German Bundeswehr-led NATO team is responsible for Information Operations experimentation before IO has been fully realised in its present form.26
Information Operations are indeed closest in nature to EBO. The United Kingdom’s view of EBO is that
future military operations will need to place increased emphasis on establishing influence over the mind of an adversary whilst keeping casualties and collateral damage to a minimum. Effects Based Operations offer the possibility of achieving this aim through a combination of both physical and psychological effects.27
The broad utility of EBO grows from the fact that they are focused on actions and their links to behaviour, on stimulus and response, rather than on targets and damage infliction. Some may consider the introduction of a new concept of EBO as a nugatory step before Information Operations have been properly exploited.28 Information Operations planners have always tried to achieve specifically targeted effects to support an objective in order to match an endstate. Might the new core capability of the United States and this newer EBO concept be synonymous? If so, then Strategic Communications/Shaping and Influencing are actually the information component of a National Effects Based Approach.
Edward Smith suggests that EBO can be described as operations in the cognitive domain because this is where human beings react to stimuli, come to an understanding of a situation, and decide on a response. To create an effect, an action first must be seen by an observer who will interpret and understand it against the backdrop of their prior experience, mental models, culture, and institutional ties, and then translate this perception into a ‘sense’ of the situation. Finally, this sense will be balanced against the options perceived to be available to produce a set of decisions and the reactions that constitute a response or ‘behaviour’. This cycle of actions and reactions will be repeated many times and at multiple levels during the course of a crisis, a war, or even a peacetime interaction.29 I suggest that most Information Operations planners would think Edward Smith’s description as also accurately describing their primary function.
Old Road or New Road
It seems that Information Operations are in real danger of being hijacked by the overarching concept of ‘Transformation’. The US military is proud of its tradition of experimentation and the USJFCOM is leading the process of Transformation. The Allied Command for Transformation (ACT) is now one of NATO’s two strategic commands. It was established in June 2003 as a result of the 2002 NATO Prague Summit. This new NATO command emphasises the close and deepening influence of the relationship with USJFCOM.
Within the US military, Transformation effectively requires changing the form and structure of its military forces together with the very nature of its military culture and doctrine. The USJFCOM–ACT relationship is growing in influence, perhaps disproportionately to the needs of the warfighter. It is considered by USJFCOM to be ‘a vibrant and powerful linkage, which is output-oriented and forms the foundation for common understanding and synchronisation of transformation across the Alliance’.30 It is questionable how this USJFCOM-ACT relationship, with two such unequal partners, will affect the continuing development and use of IO. Should it be discarded or only bypassed, to be visited only by military historians? If IO is to be the core capability Donald Rumsfeld intended it to be when signing the Roadmap in 2003, should it not receive the required framework with which to properly support the US military machine? It may yet be subsumed into an EBO construct in similar manner to C2W’s demise from Information Operations. It is worth considering, however, that Information Operations already provides the multi-purpose wrench in the military’s toolbox when planning for a National Effects Based Approach with the other elements of national power. When such strategic planning occurs in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, it tends to be both military led and military inspired.
In the Summer 2005–06 edition of the Australian Army Journal, the editor noted that ‘the reality of our times is not a choice between the black and white of conventional and unconventional warfare ... but a grey world of merging conventional and unconventional alternatives’.31 Those nations that practice and invest in both Shaping and Influencing and IO in peacetime will have an advantage in times of crisis and the early stages of conflict, while those who ignore the Information Operations threat or miss opportunities to execute it and fail to be proactive may discover they did so at their peril. In peacetime, Shaping and Influencing and Information Operations are potent but underutilised tools available to government. Employing both to avert the recent eruption of violence in the Solomon Islands is but one example of a missed opportunity.
Clearly, the US military, some years after the release of the Roadmap, ought by now to be well along the path of implementing its recommendations and indeed 2006 saw the issue of the second edition of Joint Publication 3-13. The unresolved issue now is not so much how to integrate Information Operations into military operations, but rather how to persuade politicians and public servants to coordinate the efforts of their respective departments into a National Effects Based Approach so as to provide whole-of-government forward planning with the direction, legitimacy and promise of success a nation is entitled to expect
Endnotes
1 On 26 January 2006 the 74-page Information Operations Roadmap was posted to the Internet <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB177/info_ops_roadmap.pdf>. It was released under the US Freedom of Information Act following a request by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
2 NATO conducts a two week C2W/IO course for its officers at the NATO school, Oberammergau, Bavaria, which is of a similar standard to the Australian Defence Warfare Centre’s Information Operations Staff Officers Course.
3 Admiral James O. Ellis, USN, ‘A View from The Top’, <http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/ppt/ellis_kosovo_aar.ppt>, slide 17.
4 Major General Peter Cosgrove AC, MC, ADDP 3. 13 Information Operations, 2002 p. 1-14.
5 US Joint Publication 3-13. 1, Joint Doctrine for Command and Control Warfare, February 1996.
6 On 1 April 2006 a new Joint Electronic Warfare Center was established as a formation within the Joint Information Operations Center, which itself has doubled in size in the last five years, now numbering some 300 personnel.
7 US DoD, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, 30 September 2001, p. 30; available at <http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/qdr2001.pdf>; accessed 26 February 2007. Also Information Operations Roadmap, p. 2.
8 Information Operations Roadmap, p. 2.
9 Ibid, p. 11.
10 Department of Defence, A Concept for Enabling Information Superiority and Support, Office of the Chief Information Officer, August 2004, full text is classified.
11 In ADF doctrine, IO seeks to enable decision superiority and promote freedom of action for ADF decision-making processes.
12 Major Linda Liddy, ‘The Strategic Corporal: Some Requirements in Training and Education’, Australian Army Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, Autumn 2005, pp. 139–48, <http://www.defence.gov.au/army/lwsc/Publications/journal/AAJ_Autumn05/A…;
13 Information Operations Roadmap p. 6
14 Refer 19 October 2005 SBS Dateline transcript by Stephen Dupont and John Martinkus for further details of allegations; available at <http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&daysum=2005-10-1…;; accessed 26 February 2007.
15 Colin Powell, My American Journey, Random House, NY, 1995.
16 In ADO terminology, a Strategic Shaping and Influencing Plan, agreed by the Director Joint Operations and Plans and signed by the Chief of the Defence Force.
17 Information Operations Roadmap p. 54–56
18 Ibid, p. 56
19 Ibid, p. 57.
20 Ibid, p. 29.
21 Ibid, Recommendation No. 10, p. 70.
22 Ibid, p. 20.
23 French: ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’
24 Ibid, pp. 22–3.
25 In an earlier paper prepared for VCDF and COSC submission in 2004 (classified), the author identified 25 positions to be the minimum requirement to provide adequate support to offensive and defensive Joint IO/Joint Effects planning and execution to all levels of command in the ADO. In contrast the United States has several thousand personnel dedicated to IO.
26 The Multinational IO Experiment is conducted within the framework of a Multi National Exercise series forged jointly by USJFCOM and the NATO Allied Command for Transformation (ACT) in Norfolk, Virginia, previously the HQ of the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic. In 2005 the author represented the ADF as the IO officer in an IO cell construct within a Standing Joint Force HQ for Multinational IO Experiment 2.
27 A Multi-National Concept for the Planning, Execution & Assessment of Future Military Effects Based Operations, A Discussion Paper by the UK Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre, September 2003.
28 Shaping and Influencing and IO are effects based in nature. This is especially relevant in situations where target audiences can be influenced by the information they rely upon to make decisions and where rules of engagement or force capabilities limit the full range of kinetic military options.
29 See Edward Smith, Effects Based Operations: Applying Network-centric Warfare in Peace, Crisis, and War, Department of Defense Command and Control Research Program, Washington, DC, 2002.
30 Interview with Admiral Giambastiani, NATO’s first Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, in NATO Review, Summer 2004; available at <http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2004/issue2/english/interview.html>; accessed 26 February 2007.
31 Editorial, ‘The New Grey World of War’, Australian Army Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, Summer 2005–06, p. 7, <http://www.defence.gov.au/army/lwsc/Publications/journal/AAJ_Summer_05_…;.
