Big Issue: Command and Combat in the Information Age

摘要

This Occasional Paper considers command and combat in the information age. A small team in the British Army's conceptual 'think tank,' the Directorate General Development and Doctrine, worked together on this issue for 18 months. While nobody has any certain answers, their views represent some of the current forward thinking within the British Army. They argue that the information age will be defined as much by the blossoming of regional conflict and global terrorism as by technology. However, the technology offers Britain the potential to change the way it chooses to fight and this notion lies at the core of the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). The facts are inescapable -- the age we live in demands Armed Forces characterized by new thinking, new concepts, new doctrine, new tactics, and new organizations fired by committed leadership and enabled by state-of-the-art information age technology. Topics addressed include the nature of future warfare; the nature of the Revolution in Military Affairs and the innate British reluctance to embrace it; the potential benefits of a fully digitized and networked command and control system; mission command as a prerequisite for the successful exploitation of information age command systems; the Commander as expert decision maker; a commander-centric approach to future command structures; future disparities between digitized and nondigitized forces and the inherent frictions of multinationality; information-sharing post-9/11 at the strategic intergovernmental level; intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance; aerial surveillance systems; the need for manned reconnaissance; vulnerabilities of digital systems; tactical combat with the new C4ISTAR; the end of the close battle as we know it; asymmetric warfare, the new face of warfare in the 21st century; and a fictional account of a possible future conflict.