Information Operations: A New War-Fighting Capability
Abstract
In its most basic form, commanders have always performed the functions of observe, orient, decide, and act (OODA loop) to prosecute military operations. As with Alexander the Great, history shows the military commander who best analyzes, decides, and controls the speed of the engagement prevails in nearly every conflict. To master the OODA loop, military leaders have pushed technology to obtain more information. Ironically, this situation now leads to the requirement to solve two fundamental challenges if the United States expects to maintain air and space dominance in 2025. First, the proliferation of unintegrated military war-fighting architectures gives the commander potentially conflicting perspectives of the battlespace. Second, the explosion of available information creates an environment of mental overload leading to flawed decision making. Failure to master these challenges critically weakens the military instrument of power. This paper presents a solution to these challenges by confronting commanders as they employ future airpower forces. Regarding the first challenge, the large number of specialized war-fighting architectures makes information integration supporting overall coordination and control more important and more difficult. Simultaneously, the speed and the range of modern weapons drastically reduces the time commanders have to integrate conflicting information and decide on a course of action.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1996
- Accession Number
- ADA332471
Entities
People
- Nolen R. Chew
- Philip M. Nostrand
- William B. Osborne
- Yulin G. Whitehead
Organizations
- Air Command and Staff College