Memorandum submitted by David Gompert
(January 2003)
It is a privilege to appear before the House
of Common's Defence Committee. Your network-centric operations
is timely, and your interest in an American perspective is appreciated.
Please understand that I do not speak for the US Government or
RAND, which takes no positions on policy matters.
Network-centric operations represent not only
a revolution in military affairs but also the extension of the
information technology revolution to military affairs. Although
the military pioneered computing, it has lagged the commercial
world, especially sophisticated private sector IT users, for at
least two decades. The real IT revolution began with the merging
of computing and communications, enabled by a take-off in microelectronics
and distributed processing when the old US Bell system was broken
up. Since then, we have learned that IT, especially networking,
can transform the way institutions work, with powerful effects
on productivity—but only if those institutions transform
themselves. Networking permits transformed organisations to operate
with much greater awareness, with greater precision, and in defiance
of distance.
Those three advantages are now available to
those military organisations that have the resources, skills and,
as important, willingness to adapt to exploit IT and embrace networking.
The US military has begun to change, albeit after some delay and
slowly. I have no doubt that the British military has the vision,
ability and will to transform. Scale should not be a problem for
the UK because of close strategic, military, industrial, and technological
links with the US and the UK.
Network-centric operations gain the three advantages
of IT—
1. Greater awareness, also known as
information dominance since no plausible adversaries possess this
capability. It comes from improved sensors and the means rapidly
to fuse, distribute, filter, interpret and use the data and images
they acquire. It reduces risks and permits decisive action.
2. Precision effects, with declining
regard for range. Thanks to a variety of target acquisition and
guidance improvements (on-board and off-board), we can strike
what we can find soon after we find it. By improving standoff
strike, precision makes it less necessary for ground forces to
close on targets in order to be certain of destroying them, and
it reduces collateral damage while increasing lethality. It thus
concentrates violence where enemy forces are, not ours.
3. The ability to network forces,
enabling them to operate in a more integrated yet also more dispersed
fashion. It improves maneuverability, survivability, lethality,
and control. It permits small units, which are more deployable,
agile and elusive than large ones, to operate with less fear of
being destroyed. Networking enables every part of the force to
benefit from awareness and precision effects and, in the extreme,
any unit to call upon the sensors and firepower of the force as
a whole.
This last is both the greatest advantage and
also the hardest to realise because, unlike awareness and precision
strike, it demands change in how forces are organized and managed—as
units that operate jointly with less reliance on traditional service
echelons, and with decentralized command and control.
Revolutions that demand sweeping change require strong
motivation. We know from military history that it normally takes
a disaster, a vital threat, or a peer challenger to create sufficient
motivation—conditions that do not exist for the United States
or its allies. Then why, and why now, has transformation to network-centricity
begun? And why for some countries but not others, even within
NATO?
The prime motivation is the appearance of asymmetric
threats since the last of the old-style conflicts, the Gulf War.
These threats are caused by a combination of the spread of modern
weapons (eg, SAMs and SSMs) and technologies (chemical, biological
and IT itself) and by the urge of hostile powers to neutralise
our superiority. In particular, we can observe a steady growth
of anti-access capabilities, of terrorism with global reach, and
of weapons of mass destruction. If because of these capabilities
the United States were to lose its ability or will to intervene
to protect Western interest and peace in key regions, we would
be in a very different and very dangerous world. Bluntly put,
transformation is needed to preserve the credibility of our threat
to use force against those who threaten peace. First conceived
as a way to counter hostile states, it appears that networking
can also be effective in destroying nodes in terrorist networks.
Even with this incentive, the US military undertook
little genuine change to network-centric concepts, capabilities
and organisation between the Gulf War and 11 September, and is
still in the foothills of transformation. The process is now accelerating
in the US out of concern for terrorism and WMD-armed rogues, but
it will take years of investment in and organising for network-centricity,
especially with the imbedded base of legacy weapons and communications
systems, traditional structures, and anti-joint habits.
In practical terms, the investments and measures
needed to advance this process include:
— Technology, especially jointly
interoperable C2, diverse ISTAR[1]
including unmanned systems, PGMs[2],
an array of advanced penetrating[3]
and stand-off strike systems, and missile defense. It also requires
a light, fast, lethal, air-deployable replacement for the main
battle tank.
— Concepts of operations that
include ground force assault from any direction, including overhead,
linked to precision strike power from helicopters, missiles, and
ship- and land-based aircraft.
— New units, such as the naval
expeditionary strike forces (without carriers) and integrated
combat brigades—more modular forces that can be tailored,
assembled and deployed in days, not months.
— Air and fast-sea mobility,—both
without which we cannot take advantage of the rapid deployability
that is inherent in lighter forces, smaller units, and reduced
logistics burdens.
It is crucial to be mindful of some potential
Achilles' heels of networking:
— Information warfare (IW) could be
a problem if less sophisticated adversaries acquire the ability
to attack either military C2 or ISTAR or, more likely, commercial
links and software on which preparations and operations increasingly
depend. For example, IW is a Chinese priority.
— Urban warfare is a dog that did not
bark in either Iraq 1 or Afghanistan. It is better to have networking,
awareness and precision than not in urban warfare, but they are
no panacea.
— Coalition and alliance operations
will become ever harder and as non-network-centric forces are
unable to plug into or join the increasingly integrated and fast
operations of networked forces.
As for the ability of US and UK forces to operate
together, I am very optimistic. There is a strong will on both
sides to retain and improve this ability—for the UK in order
to have the option of operating alongside the US wherever and
on whenever required, and for the US because it otherwise might
have to fight unilaterally, which is against its nature. I am
less sanguine about our other NATO allies, which lack the motivation
and, by their choice, the defense resources to transform. The
Prague initiatives may be the last chance to avoid a de facto
NATO division of labour—high-low as well as geographic.
In this regard, I think the UK is in a pivotal
position. The eyes of our other allies are as much on the UK as
on the US, as recent French official statements indicate. Similarly,
the US-UK model is the right one for other allies: Cooperation
in concept development and experimentation (CDE), in technology
sharing, in new approaches to command and control for forces integrated
by common networks, and in exercising together. UK transformation
can also stimulate US transformation: in my view, the UK military
leads the US military in jointness, decentralized C2, and adaptability.
In sum: UK progress in preparing for network-centric
operations is important for the US-UK and wider alliance and for
keeping the United States from drifting away from coalition operations.
US-UK cooperation can help the UK prepare for network-centric
operations. And the UK can help its large and often ponderous
ally transform its forces, which is good for our common security.with
network-centric operations.
1 Intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and
reconnaissance. Back
2
Precision-guided munitions. Back
3
Eg stealthy aircraft, unmanned vehicles and missiles. Back
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