A key problem within military discussions of information warfare is that the Department of Defense, the Joint Staff, and each individual service recognize that if IW is, indeed, a new form of warfare or represents a potential for a true "revolution in military affairs," then there are important implications for the traditional roles and missions of each individual service. If, for example, "to be seen is to be killed" and hostile unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) provide battlefield overview for smart artillery shells, armored units whose own air and space forces have not yet "blinded" the enemy will be sitting ducks. This, likewise, has implications for future access to increasingly scarce defense appropriations. If, for example, Congress becomes convinced that investing in swarms of cheap-tank-locating UAV for US Army helicopters to use to kill enemy tanks is a better idea, then this raises the obvious question "Why are we still buying tanks?" Indeed, Congress might ask whether the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is the better investment for plinking tanks in open terrain than an uninhabited combat air vehicle (UCAV). The military is, understandably, institutionally conservative and, as in the early discussions of airpower or current discussions of space power, more likely to attempt to fit the new into the already known.²⁷ Even the USAF has a legacy of platform-focused thinking.²⁸

On the other hand, information warfare is the hot topic of the age and everyone wants to the part of the "Third Wave," the armed forces being no exception. Unfortunately, far too much discussion in the armed forces of IW confuses the traditional importance of information-in-warfare with information warfare or information attack itself. All those papers and briefings that begin "Information has always been central to warfare. . ." and then go on to explain that "our new computer system will get information to the warfighter" so he can "achieve information dominance on the battlefield" and thus demonstrate our service's mastery of IW, confuse information-in-war with information warfare. Whether we are digitizing the cockpit or digitizing the battlefield, this is not IW.²⁹ Information-in-war is absolutely vital and will be an increasingly important issue as the use of information is central to modern warfare and, more importantly, may be the sine qua non or necessary-but-not-sufficient condition for the conduct of any future traditional warfare and certainly any future information warfare. A review of the current debate within the armed forces will illustrate the problem. Ultimately, a particular USAF idea will point to the solution.

While the current draft definition is unclassified, the official definition of information warfare remains classified top secret. The public, nonclassified and formal military discussion of information warfare began with the Joint Chiefs of Staff Memorandum of Policy (MOP) - 30 (1993), "Command and Control Warfare." This document set the initial terms of debate and, consequently, most formal debate since. Most importantly, "Command and Control Warfare" or C²W was defined as "the military strategy that implements Information Warfare on the battlefield" and its objective was to "decapitate the enemy's command structure from its body of forces."³⁰ The legacy of Desert Storm's airpower and electronic warfare against Iraq was seen as the essence of information warfare.³¹ What is really being discussed in the desert war context is, in fact, the new and creative use of information-in-war noted by Soviet and other observers.³² Note also that the discussion of IW starts as a battlefield topic with the result that much of the continuing debate places IW in the combat support role rather than as a new form of combat proper.

More recently, the Joint Staff has expanded the idea of information warfare in Joint Pub 3-13 (1995), "Joint Doctrine for Command and Control Warfare." Information warfare is defined, as noted above, as actions "taken to achieve information superiority in support of national military strategy by affecting adversary information and information systems while leveraging and defending friendly information systems."³³ Here, a central and vital issue is noted. While the armed forces may attempt to gain superiority by affecting adversary information and information systems, they can defend only friendly systems. That is, the Joint Staff seems to assert that the armed forces have no military mission or authority, currently, to defend friendly information. The armed forces, it appears to be claimed, can protect military information systems only; they cannot use military assets to defend the nonmilitary information systems of the United States from adversary attempts to gain military advantage. The political debates about the restrictions placed on conveying pornography on the Internet contained in the Communications Decency Act accompanying the recently enacted Telecommunications Act are a mere skirmish compared to the civil libertarian firestorm that would result if the military claimed a role in nongovernmental information or information systems protection.³⁴ On the other hand, the mission of the armed forces is to defend the United States, and if hostile information attack threatens the national security, it is difficult to see why the skills and experience that the armed forces are developing to protect military systems should not be loaned to an interagency Information Security Task Force.

The Joint Staff's Joint Pub 3-13 then modifies the earlier definition on command and control warfare (C²W) first used in MOP-30 in an important but ultimately inadequate way. C²W is now seen as "a {not the} war fighting application of IW in military operations {not just on the battlefield} and employs various techniques and technologies to attack or protect command and control {not just decapitate}". Joint Pub 3-13 goes on to define C²W as the "integrated use of psychological operations, military deception, operations security, electronic warfare, and physical destruction, mutually supported by intelligence." That is, the integrated use of perfectly traditional information-in-war tools and techniques.

The Joint Staff, whose views on doctrine are assumed to be directive for the individual services and whose definitions thereby amplify the importance of words, is currently developing a series of ideas for war fighting in the near-future: Joint Vision 2010 - America's Military: Shaping the Future. While not focused primarily on information warfare, Joint Vision 2010's ideas are of direct relevance to the future evolution and role of IW. Joint Vision 2010 begins with a projection of current technological trends assumed to shape the future war fighting environment. These include: (1) the increasing precision of weapons and their means of delivery, (2) the increasing menu of weapons' effects from traditional lethality to nonlethal technologies, (3) increased stealth for both offensive platforms and invisibility of friendly forces, and (4) improvements in information systems integration, from sensors to shooters, which may permit a "dominant battlespace awareness" to include the ability to "see, prioritize, assign, and assess."³⁵

These four trends, which are assumed to provide a magnitude improvement in lethality, will require information supremacy. Information supremacy is defined here as the "capability to collect, process and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying an adversary's ability to do the same."³⁶ This is, of course, both a worthy goal and a perfect definition of information-in-war. Information supremacy, according to Joint Vision 2010, will require both offensive and defensive information warfare. Offensive IW will degrade or exploit an adversary's collection and use of information and will be conducted by traditional and "nontraditional" means such as "electronic intrusion" into an information and control network to "convince, confuse, or deceive enemy military decision makers."³⁷ Defensive IW will protect dominant battlespace awareness and provide improved command and control of friendly forces and will be conducted by traditional means such as physical security and encryption and untraditional means such as antivirus protection and secure data transmission.

Joint Vision 2010, then, continues the pattern of seeing information warfare as an advanced version of command and control warfare (C²W), new techniques of traditional electronic warfare (EW), and a sense that computer viruses, as a form of EW, might be important. Information supremacy is still defined, operationally, as information-in-war rather than information warfare as a potentially new form of warfare for the future. This most current Joint Staff thinking appears to have forgotten its earlier idea in Joint Pub 3-13 that the use of the term warfare in information warfare "should not be construed as limiting IW to a military conflict, declared or otherwise."

Based on the technologies of this information supremacy providing dominant battlespace awareness, Joint Vision 2010 proposes that new concepts of operation will need to be developed. These new operational concepts (how the joint force commander will fight the fight with land, sea, air, and space forces assigned ) are (1) dominant maneuver, (2) precision engagement, (3) full-dimension protection, and (4) focused logistics. These four new operational concepts will provide "Full Spectrum Dominance" to achieve massed effects in warfare from dispersed forces across the spectrum of military actions from peacetime engagement through deterrence and conflict prevention to fight and win warfare.

The key problem with Full Spectrum Dominance is not only that its notion of information warfare is still too focused on information-in-warfare but that the application of massed effects in warfare from dispersed forces still appears to assume that massing forces is the strategic problem. The Joint Staff appears to assume, naturally enough, that land, sea, air, and space forces are the only, or certainly major, means for the joint force commander to accomplish the mission. That militarily-relevant, strategic, operational, or tactical effects might be produced by information attack without combining the various joint forces in theater may be the key difference between information-in-warfare and information warfare. A brief survey of the four new operational concepts will illustrate the problem.

Dominant maneuver is an operational concept that grows from the experience of the Gulf War and the evolution of US Army thinking from "Air-Land Battle" to "Force XXI Operations."³⁸ In essence, instead of warfare being conducted as a series or sequence of battles leading ultimately to the enemy collapse, dominant maneuver proposes to bring together widely dispersed joint forces to attack the enemy throughout the height, breadth, and depth of the battlespace by attacking all levels of the enemy's centers of gravity simultaneously.³⁹ Clearly, the increasing precision of weapons and their means of delivery, the increasing menu of weapons' effects from traditional lethality to nonlethal technologies, the increased stealth for both offensive platforms and invisibility of friendly forces, and the improvements in information systems integration are the technologies that permit dominant maneuver. Joint Vision 2010 recognizes that these new weapons will "allow us to conduct attacks concurrently that formerly required massed assets in a sequential methodology."⁴⁰ And, while these new weapons and technologies may permit us to "accomplish the effects of mass - the necessary concentration of combat power at the decisive time and place - without physically massing forces," dominant maneuver still appears to seek to "attain with decisive speed and tempo a physical presence that compels an adversary to either react from a position of disadvantage or quit." (emphasis added). Joint Vision 2010 is confused. Do mass effects require physical presence by joint forces assembled from widely dispersed locations or not? And why does Joint Vision 2010 assume that mass effects are superior to differential effects? Information warfare, advanced C²W, and information attack may not need to share this assumption.

Precision engagement and full-dimension protection make the same assumption. Precision engagement depends on a system of systems⁴¹ that permits our forces to locate the target, provide responsive command and control, have the desired effect, assess the effect, and reengage if required. That is, we can shape the battlespace and conduct a dominant maneuver. Full-dimension protection, built on information supremacy (actually, supremacy of information-in-war), will provide multidimensional awareness and assessment, as well as identification of all forces within the battlespace. Defensive information warfare will be required to protect our information systems and processes.

Focused logistics, the final new operational concept, again illustrates the thinking that the ability to project power with the most capable forces is the central problem. The ability to fuse information, logistics, and transportation technologies; provide rapid crisis response; track and shift assets even while enroute; and deliver the logistics and sustainment to the level of operations" assumes that getting stuff there for the forces is the essence of projecting power. Yes, in many cases, especially against traditional adversary's armed forces or other military operations like peace enforcement and humanitarian relief, this may be true.

Dominant maneuver, precision engagement, and full-dimension protection are clearly operational concepts that will permit the US armed forces to attain full spectrum dominance in a traditional campaign against a traditional adversary. There will be undoubtedly Saddam-revenant adversaries even in 2025. Creative USAF thinking about information warfare, however, requires that a series of unusual questions be asked: What is the future battlespace. What are forces in future conflicts? What is "there" in a future battlespace? What if the adversary is not employing forces?

Joint Vision 2010 introduces a generally thoughtful and potentially useful set of ideas for the evolution of operational concepts for US joint forces to employ in traditional military operations across a large spectrum of conflict. It correctly recognizes information-in-warfare as one of the most important and critical aspects of near-future (circa 2010) military operations. Information superiority is, in fact, the necessary condition for future joint warfare and, as such, the Joint Staff is correct in calling for far greater attention to the promise and peril of the new technologies for the collection, processing, and secure dissemination of information-in-war. Joint Vision 2010 is much less successful in addressing the implication for the US armed forces, and especially the USAF, if the potential for information warfare were to be something beyond a technology-based, more sophisticated version of command and control warfare.

It is, of course, the individual armed services that are tasked to organize, train and equip for the future. How are the individual armed services thinking about information warfare on the road to 2025?

For the US Army, "information operations" replaces information warfare as the capstone concept. Information operations are continuous military operations within the military information environment that enable, enhance, and protect the commander's decision cycle and mission execution to achieve an information advantage across the full range of military operations.⁴²

Information operations include "interacting with the global information environment and, as required, exploiting or degrading an adversary's information and decision systems." That is, the Army recognizes that information affects operations far beyond the traditional battlefield and, thus, information operations is seen as the proper "word" to include both information warfare and command and control warfare. This is a potentially important evolution in Army thinking but, currently, it results in a limited view of information warfare. information operations may, in fact, be a better word than information warfare, and could be adopted by the Joint Staff and the other services, but only if the concept is expanded to mean more than "military operations within the military information environment."

Information warfare, for the US Army, are actions taken to preserve the integrity of one's own information system from exploitation, corruption, or destruction while at the same time exploiting, corrupting, or destroying an adversary's information system and in the process achieving an information advantage in the application of force.⁴³ That is, information warfare remains in the universe of traditional platform-versus-platform thinking like "only armor can confront armor" with the information system as the new platform. Information warfare thus has been constrained to the universe of the combat support elements where techno-wizards will provide advantage for Willie and Joe to apply force with real weapons like tanks and artillery.

The US Army appears to confuse information-in-war with information warfare. The Army's goal to "assimilate thousands of bits of information to visualize the battlefield, assess the situation, and direct military action appropriate to the situation" is the use of information-in-war for traditional battle. The Army's "Information Age" Force XXI will "know the precise location of their own forces, while denying that kind of information to their foes" because, for the Army, information is "an essential dynamic enabling dominant military power at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels." This will be achieved by "using and protecting information infrastructures" while influencing or denying a potential adversary's use of these infrastructures.⁴⁴

By constraining its doctrinal thinking to the infrastructure aspects of information and adopting uncritically the Joint Staff definition of command and control warfare (C²W), the US Army may have let its traditional, and proper, land-warfare focus prematurely narrow its vision to the battlespace of armor, artillery, and infantry divisions. While it is undoubtedly important that the Army study and apply its notion of information warfare to command and control warfare, it is also undoubtedly obvious that the Army must develop its concept of information operations beyond "the military information environment." information operations, if conceived synergistically with the USAF concept of information attack, are much more than "integrated support to battle command" in traditional military operations.⁴⁵

The US Navy essentially shares the same view of information warfare as does the Air Force but, like the US Army, views information operations as a means through which to conduct traditional battle. Like the Air Force, the Navy views command and control warfare (C²W) as distinct and subordinate to information warfare proper. Like the Army, the Navy appears to view IW primarily as a means to prepare for battle. The former chief of naval operations, Adm J. M. Boorda, observed recently that because of the Navy's traditional forward deployment, "Information Warfare will give us the ability to slow and influence the enemy's decision making cycle, to prepare the battlespace before the start of hostilities, and to dictate the battle on our terms."⁴⁶ While naval doctrine for IW is in at least as much flux as that of the other services, current doctrine straddles the big view of IW and the little view of IW as C²W. Operations Naval Instruction (OPNAVIST) 3430.26 defines IW as action taken in support of national security strategy to seize and maintain a decisive advantage by attacking an adversary's information infrastructure through exploitation, denial, and influence, while protecting friendly information systems [emphasis added].⁴⁷

Platform-to-platform battle is again the model. Likewise, C²W is the "action taken by the military commander to realize the practical effects of IW on the battlefield." As a service, the Navy may be expected to develop the tools and techniques of C²W for power projection from the sea with the growing awareness of the potential for IW to project the effect of combat power far inland from the combat forces that are the source of that power.⁴⁸ The Navy recognizes that information warfare "encompasses political, economic, physical, and military infrastructures" and "expands the spectrum of warfare from competition to conflict."⁴⁹ There is an obvious potential for mutual synergy in developing asymmetric strategies between the Navy's sea and air assets and the US Air Force's air and space assets for both C²W based information warfare and information attack.

The US Air Force begins its reflections on information warfare from within its views on air and space power. For the USAF, air and space power are a means to an end, not the end itself. Like the Navy's "from the sea," air and space power are "done" in and from a "place" that is "more than a place": the air and space. Thus, air and space power include the projection of military force from air and space. The goal is air and space superiority as the necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the application or employment of all other military power. And, as air and space surround the globe, the USAF sees itself as having a global mission of air and space superiority, global mobility, and the precision employment of air and space assets. The same vision informs USAF thinking on information warfare.

For the USAF, currently, information is seen as analogous to air and space. Information is seen as a realm in which dominance will be contested and in which and from which military power can be employed. Like air and space power, information dominance is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the application or employment of all other military power and, likewise, is a global mission. Mastering information warfare, then, will become a USAF core competency like air and space superiority. Unfortunately, USAF thinking currently suffers some of the same internal contradictions as does the IW thinking of the Army and Navy and, more importantly, that of the Joint Staff. The issue is, again, confusion among information-in-war, information, and information warfare.

The USAF recognizes correctly that information dominance is a broad concept and describes it, in Air Force Doctrine Document 1 (AFDD-1) "Air Force Basic Doctrine," in the war-fighting context as that condition in which the commanders have "greater understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, and centers of gravity of an adversary's military, political, social, and economic infrastructure" than the enemy has about our side.⁵⁰ That is, information dominance provides a decisive degree of information-in-war that is essential for the successful application, enhancement, or employment of air and space power or, indeed, any other kind of military power. On the other hand, in Air Force Doctrine Document 5 (AFDD-5) "Information Warfare," information dominance is defined as that "degree of superiority in information functions that permit friendly forces to operate at a given time and place without prohibitive interference from opposing forces."⁵¹ As will be discussed presently, information "functions" is a problematic limitation. While information dominance must become a core USAF competency by 2025, it is only one key step, potentially, toward full-information warfare competency. Like the US Army, USAF thinking on information warfare must not be constrained to "information functions."

Unlike Joint Pub 3-13 (1995), "Joint Doctrine for Command and Control Warfare," USAF thinking on information warfare appears to see aerospace power as not constrained by political considerations from protecting the military forces against hostile enemy information actions. That is, for the USAF, IW is any action to "deny, exploit, corrupt, or destroy an adversary's information, information systems, and information operations" while protecting "friendly forces from similar actions."⁵² While the Joint Staff, the Army, and Navy see part of IW as protecting our military systems and military information infrastructure, the USAF appears to envision part of IW as defending the armed forces against enemy information actions as well as defending the military information infrastructure. The USAF is right: waiting for an electronic Pearl Harbor and then beginning the slow buildup and deployment of Army land power to apply force is not the way to prepare the armed forces for the fight, or to deter fighting, in the information age.

It must be admitted that current USAF thinking is confused in the area of information warfare and has not yet reached a coherence in the words that will define and guide doctrine. The USAF doctrine community, unfortunately dispersed among the Air Staff, the Air Force Doctrine Center at Langly AFB, the College of Doctrine, Research and Education at Air University, and the Air Command and Staff College and Air War College, must aim to harmonize its thinking. USAF long-range planning cannot incorporate the information warfare insights developed in research like New World Vistas or Air Force 2025 without a coherent vocabulary. Words matter.Air Force Doctrine Document-1 (AFDD-1), Air Force Doctrine Document-5 (AFDD-5) and Cornerstones

Current (August 1995 draft) Air Force Doctrine Document-1 (AFDD-1), "Air Force Basic Doctrine," and AFDD-5, "Information Warfare," postulate six roles for air and space power: control, strike, mobility, information, sustainment, and preparation. The information role is defined to include command, control, communications, and computers (C⁴); intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, navigation and positioning; and the weather service. Clearly, information is seen like sustainment and preparation as combat support or combat service support to the war-fighting missions of strike, control, and mobility. According to AFDD-1, USAF core competencies, as in Air Force Executive Guidance, include air superiority, space superiority, global mobility, precision employment, and information dominance. As noted above, for AFDD-1, information dominance is that condition that gives greater understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, and centers of gravity of an adversary's military, political, social, and economic infrastructure than the enemy has about our side. The core competency of information dominance, then, appears to be accomplished by the information role of air and space power.

In an attempt to provide the doctrinal foundation⁵³ for information warfare, the USAF chief of staff, Gen Ronald R. Fogleman, and the secretary of the Air Force, Sheila E. Widnall, issued Cornerstones of Information Warfare in 1995. Cornerstones proposes that the roles and missions of air and space power are not the six of AFDD-1 but four: aerospace control, force application, force enhancement, and force support. Information warfare is not a separate role or mission but is incorporated as a component of aerospace power. In aerospace control, IW is counterinformation- actions dedicated to controlling the information realm. Command and control warfare (C²W) appears under the mission of "force application." Information operations, really any action involving information-in-war, is part of "force enhancement" while the role of information in "force support" is merely noted.⁵⁴

Command and control warfare (C²W) is central to all military discussions of IW and Cornerstones views C²W part of the force application mission. Here the USAF has made its most distinctive and promising addition to IW thinking. Cornerstones modifies the model of C²W proposed by the Joint Staff and adopted by the Army and Navy from the "integrated use of psychological operations, military deception, operations security, electronic warfare, and physical destruction, mutually supported by intelligence" to "psychological operations, military deception, security measures, electronic warfare, physical destruction, and information attack."⁵⁵

Information attack, is defined in Cornerstones as "directly corrupting information without visibly changing the physical entity within which it resides."⁵⁶ The USAF is the first to recognize that IW is about information itself and not just information-in-war. IW is about ideas and epistemology, what is known and how it is known, and would be waged largely, but not entirely, through adversary information systems and infrastructures. The target of war is ultimately the human mind of the adversary decision makers and, in the information age, it is information itself that is, increasingly, the center of gravity of an adversary's military, political, social, and economic infrastructure. In reality, what Cornerstones is asserting is that information is not just a realm in which dominance will be contested, but rather, the realm is information. Information is both the target and the weapon.

The USAF has a better sense of command and control warfare than either Joint Pub 3-13 or the Army documents. C²W is seen by the USAF as a force application mission like interdiction or close air support and it would conduct C²W through electronic warfare, psychological operations, military deception, physical attack, and security measures.⁵⁷ Cornerstones adds information attack to C²W. As a force application mission, C²W attack (especially information attack) can be used for strategic, operational, or tactical effect. Like strategic air and space power, C²W is not just a battlefield support mission. C²W for the USAF and the Navy is only a particular form of IW, and to restrain the Navy or the USAF to C²W as the extent of its contribution to IW operations would be a foolish waste of sea, air and space power assets and capabilities. The problem comes, however, with Cornerstones' foundation idea of information attack doctrine in the authoritative context of official USAF doctrine represented in AFDD-1.

While AFDD-1 recognizes that information warfare could be used for neutralizing an adversary's will and capacity to make war, its view of information attack illustrates the same unimaginative platform-to-platform thinking as "only aircraft can contest aircraft for air superiority." That is, information attack is seen in AFDD-1 as the use of "computers and communications to directly attack the adversary's information operations."⁵⁸ At first glance, and given the Army understanding of information operations, this appears to move beyond attacking platforms. The problem is that an information operation is any activity that involves information functions and, most importantly, Cornerstones has defined information functions as the technology-dependent elements involved in the acquisition, transmission, storage, or transformation of information seen as data and instructions.⁵⁹

Because AFDD-1, "Basic Doctrine" defines information as "the organized network of information functions that enhance employment of forces," and Cornerstones has defined information functions as the technology-dependent elements of the network, there is a danger that the very sophisticated idea of information attack may be seen as little different from the Army's notion of "using and protecting information infrastructures while influencing or denying a potential adversary's use" of these infrastructures. It is still a counterplatform model.

AFDD-5, "Information Warfare," on the other hand, has defined information attack as "activities taken to manipulate or destroy an adversary's information without visibly changing the physical entity within which it resides" and information functions as any activity involving the acquisition, transmission, or storage or information.⁶⁰ The key question is: Does the USAF recognize "any activity" beyond attacking (and defending) the technology-dependent information infrastructure as part of information attack?

Authoritative USAF thinking has not demonstrated how IW could be used for "neutralizing an adversary's will and capacity to make war" beyond a slightly more expansive notion of command and control warfare tied to tricky computer hacking to enhance the employment of forces. The USAF must rethink AFDD-1 and AFDD-5 to realize the potential of information warfare implicit in a creative development of information attack. The USAF must also reject the idea that IW is only to enhance the employment of forces, and must break free of the mantra of jointness wherein air and space power are discussed only within the context of supporting the Joint Force Commander. Air and space power will permit information attack in 2025, and information attack may be the differential that permits asymmetric strategic operations by aerospace power alone in war and peace.

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