Army Network-Enabled Operations: Expectations, Performance, and Opportunities for Future Improvements

摘要

The U.S. Army expects that the performance of ground forces can be greatly enhanced by improving the networks that tie them together and by developing new tactics that take advantage of the special properties of these networks. The Army employs thousands of individual networks, including those used by the operating forces for command and control, intelligence, maneuver, fires, and logistics, as well as those used by the generating force at bases in CONUS and abroad. These networks include the infrastructure and services that process, store, and transport the information used by the Army. Ultimately, these networks extend into the minds of soldiers and leaders and into their interactions with each other. In this monograph, we examine the capabilities that this broad set of networks provides in four areas: physical aspects, including the radios, terminals, routers, landlines, and so forth that constitute the network infrastructure and provide network connectivity; the information environment, including the databases where information is created, manipulated, and shared; cognitive attributes, including sense-making tools that aid or enable situational awareness, situational understanding, decisionmaking, and planning; and social interaction, including collaboration, synchronization of actions, standard operating procedures, and tactics, techniques, and procedures enabled by the network. Specifically, this study addressed the following questions: (1) Do the networks used by the Army enable commanders to 'see first, understand first, act first, and finish decisively'; (2)What new, and perhaps unexpected, developments should the Army embrace and push forward; (3) Where would additional investments yield the greatest rewards in terms of added performance; and (4) What changes in doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, and facilities (DOTMLPF) should the Army make to achieve the expected network functionality and utility.