Avoiding Information Overload
1998; The MIT Press; Volume: 78; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0026-4148
Autores Tópico(s)Military Strategy and Technology
ResumoTIME IS A COMPONENT of the effective application of violence, which lies at the heart of the military profession. Therefore, we must understand how we operate within time, beyond mere experiential information, so that we can formulate new concepts of how we might more efficiently accomplish or threaten violence in the pursuit of tactical, oprational and strategic political objectives. We seek to operate than any potential enemy, but to do this we need to analyze how we think about time.1 This article offer a conceptual solution that will allow Army leaders to focus their efforts in designing systems and technology intended to increase the relative operations tempo (OPTEMPO) of US combat forces. New technological innovations arrive weekly within the force, and we struggle to put words to new concepts. But what are the benefits of this new information access and manipulation ability? What are the potential results from all our evolving equipment and data collection dissemination advances? We know where we want to go and how we want to fight. We want to be all-knowing and all-seeing. We think this will allow us to outmaneuver the enemy by acting faseter than he can now we need to understaand how we will act faster. One aspect remains constant- our doctrine will reflect our history, and this history relects our experiences in combat.2 There is one stumbling block in this.We have raely addressed the concept of time beyond nothing that faster is better. The US Army has not qualified a larger framework for the fyfle that units execute to move from impetus to execution.3 Thie shortfall should be corrected dso that we might identify where we are, with regard to the speed of our operations, and where we might improve in the future. Through analysis and refinement of how we think about time, and how our forces move in time, we might indentify the specific improvements we need to increase our OPTEMPO. It seems inevitable and desirable that information technology will change the very nature of how the US Army fights and operates-tactically and operationally.4 Yet questions continue to flow in the professional journals about how these new tchnologies, integrated with future doctrine, should change our warfare component in understanding how we want our new equipment to interoperate. We are missihng an Army-unique approach to understanding OPTEMPO. One conceptual approach to military operations and tempo-the Cycle, also known as the observe-orient-decide-act (OODA) loop-is preferred in most US Army and US Marine Corps doctrine.5 An abbrebiated less-detailed form is cited as the IDA cycle (information-decision-action).6 However, given our current Decision model, one might conclude that future US combat operation could unfold slower than expected. Is this likely to be true, or is the model itself incomplete or irrelevant in kight of new technology and the ground combat environment? The Boyd Cycle In the late 1970s, Air Force pilot Colonel John Boyd wanted to understand why US fighter aircraft consostenly won air combat engagements against aircraft that had better maneuverability. His observations led to what is now known as the Boyd Cycle. Conventional wisdom dictated that aircraft with better maneuverability, given similar speed capabilities, should generally win most close engagements. However, this was not happening in actual air-to-air engagements. US fighters, despite wider turn radii, consistently beat opponent aircraft and pilots. Based upon an analysis of the airframes and their capabilities, Boyd came upon a subtle conclusion. It was not the turn radius that is the decisive factor in air combat, it is the ability to see the enemy and the speed with which control inputs reached control surfaces which turned the tide in singular engagements. Boyd's hypothesis was that US fighters were winning because they could complete a loop of action than enemy aircraft. …
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