The Issue of Decision Up-Creep in Network Centric Warfare

Abstract

Network Centric Warfare (NCW) will provide operational commanders with unprecedented access to tactical level information. Depending on any number of external factors from politics to personality, access to this information may tempt operational commanders to micromanage the tactical actions of their subordinates. While it is the commander's prerogative to make decisions for any level of the force, the problem of "decision up-creep" could undermine synchronization on the tactical level and undo many of the war fighting benefits derived from a fully netted force. This paper serves three purposes. First, through the use of examples from recent operations, it shows that the unprecedented "reach" provided by NCW will increase the operational commander's temptation to micromanage tactical actions. Second this paper shows that decision up-creep would virtually negate all of the benefits of NCW. Finally, this paper presents organizational, doctrinal and cultural alternatives for mitigating decision up-creep.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 03, 2003
Accession Number
ADA415482

Entities

People

  • Kavon Hakimzadeh

Organizations

  • Naval War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Afghanistan Conflict
  • Battlefields
  • Battles
  • Combat Areas
  • Command And Control
  • Information Systems
  • Military Operations
  • Navy
  • Network Centric Warfare
  • Security
  • Situational Awareness
  • Targets
  • United States Central Command
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare
  • Weapons

Readers

  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.