New decision aids, intelligent agents, simulation, modeling, and forecasting aided by artificial intelligence and fuzzy logic permit large volumes of data to be collected, processed, and displayed without swamping users. Data correlated becomes information. Information converted into situational awareness becomes knowledge. Knowledge used to predict the consequences of actions leads to understanding. Thus the cognitive hierarchy.
A DBK, defined not as data (the transparent battlefield) but as knowledge (a significant exploitable asymmetry) offers powerful implications for the organization of warfare. DBK provides synoptic integrative knowledge, not just data on discrete objects and events. DBK lets its possessors pierce the fog of war and thus master the unfolding progression of circumstance, decisions, and actions in the battlespace; it puts commanders in real-time command. C4I is converted from mere coordination to the orchestration of combat power focused on decisive points. Those who respond rapidly can acquire the advantages of initiators but avoid the vulnerabilities to which initiators expose themselves. Thus is altered the historic balance between offense and defense.
DBK can be applied at one of three levels:
DBK (plus advanced communications) can alleviate classic span- of-control constraints and allow command structures to be delayered to improve rather than impede flows of critical information. Many intervening filters hitherto needed to process information and control subordinates could be replaced by automated decision- support systems that respond directly to the battle commanders. Local information (e.g., detailed health and status updates) need no longer flow up nor or detailed orders flow down.
DBK (plus precision strike) would let U.S. forces threaten enemy buildups prefatory to invasion. Excellent real-time surveillance capabilities lets us locate, track, and target enemy mobile forces and their critical logistics and C4I infrastructures. We could place their forces at risk rather than going after static (but easy-to-find) centers of gravity and chancing collateral damage.
Our response to Iraq's October 1994 feint illustrates the current practice of interposing U.S. forces in response to hostile acts. Unfortunately, as our overseas bases close and forward deployments draw down, our forces have to move farther to contingencies. Intervention costs more and takes longer and is thus less viable against repetitive or continuous threats. If we could get the same result by coupling smaller on-scene forces (so that opponents would still have to mass for attack) with devastating counter-concentration attacks staged from over the horizon, DBK would prove a powerful deterrent.
Although DBK will be implemented according to the commander's vision, it assumes a common set of capabilities and requires a core set of supporting systems (among them, wide-area sensors and fast processors). Unfortunately, DBK cannot be appreciated within the present framework of stovepipe operations and piece-part analyses. They require a shift in focus from individual elements of combat power to their integration.
The synoptic vision of DBK lets commanders:
By so doing, commanders can transcend the classic problems of coping with uncertainty: where to direct personal focus, how to assess prefiltered information (e.g., the directed telescope), how to avoid dependence on preplanned responses to potential contingencies, and foremost, and how to oversee and orchestrate the entire operational area despite its scale and scope. Like a counter-punching boxer, DBK lets commanders exploit the enemy's own initiatives.
One of key functions of command is to allocate resources, including time, to accommodate the progress of the operation and not give the enemy a breathing space through material shortfalls or human exhaustion (see Training and Doctrine Command [U.S. Army], FM 100-5, Operations, June 1993.). DBK allows commanders to develop an adaptive intent to unify the activities in the battlespace and let them execute a simultaneous high-tempo integrated operations against the enemy's military power and will. Quantity and tempo, in and of itself, can overload the enemy's command system and generate exploitable opportunities while minimizing casualties attendant from extended, attrition combat.
DBK allows the application of force from multiple media at the right place and time. It supports both cycle-time and phase-control dominance so that agile and adaptive units can engage and defeat larger forces in rapid succession. By conducting a seamless, continuous campaign, these tactical victories could be propagated not only throughout the extent of the opponent's tactical echelons, but they would also have a cumulative impact resulting in decisive victories. DBK is the key to achieving nonlinear combat results; even tactical units can initiate operationally decisive results, as they did at the Battle of Midway.
If DBK is to be truly dominant, it must entail a real- time synoptic vision defined by the relationship among the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. Synoptic will be defined not so much by sensors but by the commander's ability to integrate widearea information and comprehend it (which depends on how good the decisions aids are) and by the planning horizon (affected by unit mobility and the reach of the weapons).
The act of acquiring DBK cannot wait for combat; assets such as submarines, mobile missiles, and mine-laying equipment are hard to find and track after units deploy. Battlespace preparation requires data (e.g., near-continuous tracking of enemy assets) to start flowing in peacetime and grow denser as crisis builds. Such data includes enemy orders of battle, table of organization and equipment databases, and target locations. Because DBK is pointless if decoupled from the will and means to act, this suggests a more assertive posture for the United States to adopt during peace and crises to retain initiative and control, rather than react to the transition to crisis and conflict.
DBK requires that what each level sees is consistent (and proportionate to its need for situational awareness), not necessarily the same. Scalability matters, as does avoiding information overload, a potential hazard of DBK systems. DBK must provide location and movement data on one's own forces and enemy forces, and on the complex relationships and interactions between the two. It must allow the relative phase between the sides to be controlled through time-distance relationships.
DBK can be particularly useful for tomorrow's war. Combat can be expected to be dispersed, noncontiguous, discontinuous, and nonsequential, characterized by meeting engagements (rather than planned assaults and defenses are more likely) and heir to the rapid propagation of success and failure. Hitherto, the purpose of linear deployments was to maintain a continuous front to minimize exposure and vulnerability from the flanks and salients. Nonlinear tactics try to do the same by reducing exposure times and using coordinating units to provide cover. Coherent operations provide leverage to tactical initiatives as they are exploited by a fully integrated, adaptive force capable of seizing them in real-time. A nonlinear battlespace requires different skills of both senior and subordinate commanders.
Cycle-Time Dominance: DBK improves the understanding of critical combat dynamics as they occur so that they may be translated into timing and spatial cues for tactical actions.
Many analysts have returned to the Observation-Orientation- Decision-Action (OODA) Loop (see Col John R. Boyd, USAF [Ret.], A Discourse on Winning and Losing, August 1987) to understand the potential impacts of the Information Revolution on combat operations. Unfortunately they have focussed on the decision side rather than the action side. Good communications are analogous to Boyd's key technical requirement for 3,000 psi hydraulics, to link a pilot's rapid decisions to his aircraft's performance. As with air combat, small advantages in each maneuver action ultimately result in a decisive firing solution. This is particularly attractive for repetitive action/response cycles in combat. Time becomes the critical determinant of combat advantage.
Phase Dominance: But what shorter cycle times really achieve is to let U.S. forces to select the right time to engage the enemy so as to maximize differences in relative combat capabilities. Phase-Dominance builds small advantages into decisive victories. DBK informs commanders of the natural operating cycles and rhythms of enemy forces (as well as their own) and ensures that actions can be executed exactly when needed.
Maintaining the coherence (a combination of mental and physical concentration) of combat units is never easy -- especially when they are forced to alter their state in combat (one reason why the reorientation conducted by the 20th Maine at Little Roundtop is considered a classic). Armies change their tempos and shift back and forth between road march and assault formation; between defense against air to defense against ground; or from either to offense; from one objective to another, especially in meeting engagements. Each change not only perturbs unit coherence but risks a loss in the essential phasing between the integrated joint forces that produces overall operational coherence. It requires a different mental attitude and task sets -- a resetting of the cycle. The coherence of an organization takes time to reestablish (this might be called a phase-change time-constant). In the interim, the unit cannot act in focus and is more vulnerable.
Surprise works because it comes from unexpected directions, but a larger reason is that it hits at unexpected phases in the operational cycle; it forces an unexpected and disruptive phase- change with the attendant loss of coherence while re-orientation is taking place. Thus, U.S. dive bombers caught the Japanese carriers by surprise at Midway during their extremely vulnerable refueling and rearming phase of cyclic operations.
In the Cold War, the U.S. developed a detailed understanding of Soviet equipment, order of battle, doctrine, concepts of operations, and tactics. We observed their large-scale training, tests and experiments, and read their military texts. Thus, we could train and exercise against them (or their prot‚g‚s) with great realism. We also knew the battlefield. Our soldiers in Germany used to boast that they knew every rock and tree between the Inner-German Border and their positions. Similarly, submariners, as much as anyone, recognize the need for details of the operating area (such as thermal layer depths, bottom features, and even seasonally changing biota) that operational, onscene experience alone provides.
With some exceptions (e.g., North Korea), we will lack these advantages against tomorrow's enemies. With today's threats so diverse, such familiarity must be acquired much faster. Real-time learning will have to be substituted for intelligence -- a new requirement that must be factored into DBK at all echelons. It also helps to know how others may respond to your moves; this helps define the size of the battlespace and focus the resources behind DBK. This creates a need to educate everyone simultaneously about enemy tactics, concepts, equipments, and system capabilities -- with profound implications for professional military education and training.
The classic approach to jointness used discrete units from the services but ones separated in time and space through Fire Support Control lines. This reduced mutual interference and allowed each force to operate tactically by itself. This model eased problems stemming from limited real-time situational awareness and communications that complicated coordinating diverse forces. The problem was that joint capabilities were simply additive. Admiral Owens, for instance, posited two paths for jointness (see ADM William Owens in "Living Jointness," Joint Forces Quarterly [Winter 1993-94]: 7-14). The specialized path uses the best qualified force component for a given mission; the more effective path, synergism, was created by "combining forces in such a way that higher outputs (combat effectiveness) result than could be achieved by simply adding the outputs of different forces." His analysis suggested the two were fundamentally different paths rather than one dimension with different degrees of synergy and effectiveness.
Because the U.S. defense drawdown makes overwhelming force much harder to field, joint operations are required for effectiveness and efficiency. Intuitive acceptance of integrated joint forces and dependence on non-organic, non-controlled resources and capabilities are also needed. Integrating U.S. forces from different media forces opponents to counter multidimensional, multifunctional operations, but they also create opportunities for exploitation by different elements of the force at the same time they cloak vulnerabilities and disadvantages of operations conducted in single medium.
Synergy comes from focusing on a common tactical objective, employing common doctrine, synchronizing the tactical echelons, and providing mutual support. Its prerequisite is that it requires integration at lower tactical echelons and thus demands greater situational awareness, broader understanding of operational progress, and greater adaptability in procedures.
Coherent operations conduct combat as a single process with an integrated unit operating in-phase to amplify its power, exploit opportunities in real time, and get inside the opponent's cycle times. Integration cannot work without defeating the friction inherent in operations conducted by diverse forces. Phase-related differences in operating cycles among joint forces tend to explain the difficulties in managing joint operations. Subtle factors affecting when phases change and how long it takes help in understanding how to execute operations coherently.
The ability to see, understand, adjust, and communicate better and faster is the foundation of integration. DBK provides these essential tools; it enables force integration and reinforcement without pausing for synchronization or mutual interference. This gives joint forces all the advantages of a single organism (e.g., cycle-time advantage) while retaining their underlying diverse capabilities (see Jeffrey R. Cooper, The Coherent Battlefield, SRS White Paper, Arlington VA, June 1993).
For that reason, complex systems operating at the edge of their performance envelope require their feedback loops to function well, which means fast, tight, and predictably. Delays can delink adaptive corrective actions and knowledge of their effects, and it is also difficult to maintain coherent processes in excessively slack systems. Both are heir to unpredictable overshoot and undershoot because of imprecise control or prediction. DBK offers unique opportunities to maintain the real-time, close-coupling required for feedback loops to assist in leading a flexible, dynamic campaign.
The key to conducting complex joint operations coherently is timely communication of the commander's intent so that the entire hierarchy shares a consistent vision and objective. DBK will provide tools to reinforce the traditional role of command exercise by promoting a shared timely image of the battle (a combination of intelligence and status indicators) even as it adapts to an evolving battlespace.
Changes in the locus and focus of decisionmaking will change the nature of the transmitted information: intelligence support, issues, data-types, and channels.
Decisive Combat: The most fundamental changes in warfare may be the return of Clausewitzian decisive victories in place of attrition warfare. The latter paradigm, exemplified by World Wars I and II, were waged by large, relatively equal, industrialized nation-states, and won largely by material and mass, not by coups de main or great battlefield victories (even those like Kursk and Stalingrad).
DBK lets commanders exploit seams in the enemy's forces, gaps in his abilities, and openings provided by his sequential operations. Forces and fires can be rapidly reassigned between holding, breakthrough, and exploitation operations. Opponents can be kept from cohering their forces so that the United States avoids the need to take on enemy forces en bloc (as General Sullivan noted of Operation Just Cause). Mobile, lethal, and rapid operations conducted in parallel could let U.S. forces defeat units in detail at a time of our own choosing across the battlespace. The other side can act only in a pre-planned but uncoordinated manner in the face of our initiatives. The result may thus resemble the classic coup de main, except not executed as a single main-force engagement but a parallel set of tactical operations.
Throughout the Cold War, the United States worried about fighting outnumbered. Its strategy against the Warsaw Pact coupled quantitative advantages and sufficient size to dissipate the momentum of the Pact forces through tactical nuclear weapons or later Active Defense. Only with AirLand Battle (1983) did the we begin to think of decisive strokes with conventional forces.
In the brief period between the Wall's fall and the Drawdown, there remained enough overwhelming Force to wage AirLand Battle against regional opponents such as Iraq. Efficiency in deployment and sustainment of massive force rather than effectiveness in force application was the critical problem. With the Drawdown the latter is essential. DBK permits limited forces to be an effective instrument of war by allowing the conduct of decisive combat.
Altering the Command and Control Paradigm: Many suggest that high-tempo complex simultaneous operations does not let the commander control forces effectively. Command has to be automated through preplanned courses of action and rules of engagement. Yet true integration demands the reinforcement of commanders in exercising real-time command during combat. This, in turn requires reexamining the current paradigm that treats command and control as inseparable. Exploiting DBK demands decentralization of command authority and a concomitant relaxation of control at the higher levels. Existing organizational structures (themselves reactions to earlier C3I shortages) reinforce the tight linkage between command and control, as well as classic distinctions between strategic, operational, and tactical operations. The need to support seamless, continuous, parallel operations also requires modifying the C4I architectures that support the command structure.
Counterpart adaptations in commercial firms have taken so long because technologies were used to increase efficiency in performing the old tasks, rather than reengineering the entire process. Exploiting the DBK is likely to require similarly fundamental changes in military operational concepts and organization structures.
If DBK centralizes sensor fusion and decisionmaking it can introduce new vulnerabilities. If it is built on decentralized decisionmaking and exploiting, vulnerabilities may be reduced; there will be fewer nodes that can affect the entire operation if corrupted.
DBK offers the ability to focus on key battlespace activities. But loss of critical focus may be induced by phase-change information overload, or self-induced distractions. In tomorrow's high-tempo battlespace, the opponent's C2W activities need only to distract or delay momentarily for critical focus to be lost. IW may cause loss of lock (a reason for revisiting the extensive Soviet literature on Radio-Electronic Combat). Vulnerability assessment, while warranted, must be considered as part of integral operational design, not merely overlaid as a stand-alone, counter- counter-measure plan.
Because DBK is largely built from commercial systems, it is available to others. Whether or not the technology itself gives the United States an advantage will depend on who uses it well. Unfortunately, our intelligence community has had more success tracking system capabilities than in predicting how well others could use them -- which, for DBK, depends on complex questions of organizational cultures and adaptability difficult for outsiders to predict.
Nevertheless, because the information revolution is real, most elements of DBK are inevitable. Whether we can harvest this revolution and strengthen our national security is a matter of choice; so is the selection of focus and means of implementation, which, in turn, depends less on enhancing the individual piece- parts than on integrating all elements into a synergistic, effective organization. These issues demand the most serious consideration.