Information War and the Air Force: Wave of the Future? Current Fad?
Abstract
'Information War,' in all of its actual and semantic variations, is a very hot topic these days. The subject has received considerable attention in a variety of forums: serious analysis for professionals, popularized accounts for lay audiences, pop futurology, and post-Cold War melodramas. The national security bureaucracy is currently very active in this arena, with all of the military services and various civilian agencies and their supporting analytical organizations (including RAND) establishing centers for information warfare, writing position papers, and generally grappling with the problem of how to cope with the information revolution and its consequences. There is good news and bad news in the surge of interest in information warfare. The good news is that the public discussion could heighten the awareness of policy-makers to information-related issues and possibly help focus policy-level debates. Recognizing the importance of using information effectively in war is hardly news-Sun Tzu, for example, covered the subject over 2000 years ago. Moreover, there have been continuing, well established efforts in the national security community in many critical information-related areas electronic combat, computer and communications security, intelligence collection of all sorts, etc.-that long predate the current interest in information warfare.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 1996
- Accession Number
- ADA322532
Entities
People
- Glenn Buchan
Organizations
- RAND Corporation