An Organizational Assessment of the United States Military's Ability to Control the Electromagnetic Spectrum in the 21st Century

Abstract

The United States (U.S.) has the best-trained and equipped military in the world; however, these factors do not necessarily equate to success in operations. Information is a vital component of warfare that facilitates success. Electronic warfare (EW) organizations in the U.S. military are tasked to control battlefield information flow throughout the range of military operations. Historically, the U.S. has effectively accomplished this mission; however, recent events reveal symptoms of a decline in America's ability to exploit, attack, and protect information systems. This thesis executed a contingency theory based organizational analysis of command level EW organizations responsible for EW plans and management within the Department of Defense. The collective assessment using the combined open systems model and ORGCON (Burton et al., 1998) expert system revealed the organization has not adequately adjusted to the dynamic environment of the twenty first century. Implementation of recommended changes to the EW strategic task, leadership rank structure, education system, and division of EW may assist the U.S. military to maintain its information advantage in future operations.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA475994

Entities

People

  • Philip F. Acquaro

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Electronic Warfare
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Electronic Warfare
  • Employment
  • Geographic Regions
  • Geography
  • Information Systems
  • Military Operations
  • Military Organizations
  • Military Science
  • Mobile Phones
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personnel Management
  • Unified Combatant Commands
  • United States Strategic Command
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Irregular Warfare and Special Operations Cyberspace Operations against Adversarial Threats.
  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Strategic Security Studies

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics