Knowledge-Based Warfare Implications
1997; The MIT Press; Volume: 77; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0026-4148
Autores Tópico(s)Intelligence, Security, War Strategy
ResumoHIGH-INTENSITY land combat is evolving into a form conveniently labeled knowledgebased warfare, which is defined as warfare in which combat power is best concentrated through information transmission. We must make the distinction between evolution and revolution to illuminate what should be intuitively obvious: Many of the tactics, techniques and procedures (TIPs) developed over the last six decades retain their utility, but we have reached a technological watershed from which new forms of war will flow. Determining which features of traditional warfare will hamstring and which will facilitate the execution of knowledge-based operations is the key to victories. Future wars fought by what the US Army Training and Doctrine Command Pamphlet 525-5, Force XXI Operations, calls complex, adaptive will involve weapons of significantly increased range and lethality, expanding the battlespace where land forces fight.l Survival in the presence of such weapons, particularly the new generations of artillerydeliverable munitions, demands troop dispersal. This emptying of the will require an array of multispectral sensors, often operating over great distances, to detect targets. Data collected by these sensors will then have to be transformed into usable intelligence or targeting information and then passed to firing units that often cannot directly see their targets. Linkage between units, between commanders and subordinates and between sensors and shooters will rarely be established through physical contact. The spatial separation of detector, analyst and firer, even at the lowest tactical levels, means that concentrating combat power at a specific point in time and space will involve electromagnetic spectrum reliance to a greater degree than ever before. Concurrently, armies on the future conventional battlefield will possess robust information technologies fully capable of exploiting that spectrum.2 Collection, analysis and dissemination of data on friend and foe will improve dramatically, due to communication system advances and computers' integrative powers. Knowledge-based warfare's essence at operational levels and below is the synthesis of improved weaponry with the data transmission mechanisms necessary to properly employ them. That synthesis requires a re-examination of basic premises about tactics and functions. Future tactics will be dominated by a single fundamental principle. Whether they are in armoured vehicles, on their feet or dug in, troops deployed at high density will certainly be pulverized into incapacity . .. if they are exposed to the enemy's firepower.3 Nevertheless, weapon systems still must be massed to win the close battle. The solution to this tactical conundrum is to mass maneuver elements at a point-either in time or space-where the enemy cannot effectively concentrate his fires against them. Traditionally, several techniques could be used to avoid the enemy's fire: destroying or suppressing his weapon systems, evading his systems by exploiting terrain or reduced visibility and maneuvering around his systems. In general, these techniques remain valid today and for the immediate future. However, knowledge-based warfare will render our current understanding of these techniques obsolete. A good example of how our traditional thinking is undermined is our understanding of reduced visibility. Thermal sights and second-generation forwardlooking infrared radars, combined with position and navigation systems, have literally turned night into day. Today's average gunner actually prefers night engagements, because targets stand out much better when the background is largely stripped of daytime clutter. A light morning fog wreaks far more havoc with observation than the blackest night. Fog dampens heat emissions, interferes with communications and dissipates range-finding or designating lasers. While this particular lesson is easily grasped, not all changes will be so obvious. …
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