Information Warfare: An Old Operational Concept with New Implications

摘要

The new balance of information and energy (as well as the degree of coupling between them) is changing the conduct of warfare. Expect to see much more intensive use of deception, stealth and redundancy as well as much smaller and stealthier platforms in order to neutralize the impact of highly accurate PGMs. Taken in aggregate, these changes call for fundamentally different approaches to the design and development of weapon systems, which, in turn, will inevitably lead to basic changes in strategy, tactics and doctrine. Key assets of the national civilian infrastructure may, under certain circumstances, become highly lucrative military centers of gravity for an adversary, blurring the traditional dividing line between the combatant and civilian domains. Even more disturbing is the nature of this critical vulnerability-involving asymmetry of forces, arduous tracing of information warfare attacks, and the bypassing of the military. These conditions, and their interrelationships, may radically alter the role of the military as well as our definition of war.