Who Runs What In the Global Information Grid. Ways to Share Loacland Global Responsibility

摘要

Traditionally, information was used to provide commanders with broad situational awareness, leaving operators to rely on what their own senses provided (quintessential local data) in order to conduct combat. In the last 50 years, the advent of sensors and their ever-lengthening range, coupled with the ability to digitize information and distribute it globally, have changed all this. The campaign in Kosovo was largely fought using global information: Sensor-acquired data on Yugoslavian targets were often analyzed far from the front and converted into aim points for precision-guided weaponry. The rise of global information in turn suggests that DoD's information systems as a whole should be agglomerated into what has been variously referred to as a 'System of Systems' (from Admiral Owens); 'Battlespace Infosphere' (from the Air Force Science Advisory Board); or, the term now favored within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the 'Global Information Grid (GIG)' (or, in the shorthand used here, the Grid).