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Information operations as a core competency
Joint Force Quarterly, Dec, 2004 by Christopher J. Lamb
The United States fields the most capable military the world has seen. Some are concerned that the Nation will settle into complacency and wait for the historic norm--for the high cost of military failure to stimulate change. Such repose would be inconsistent with the record of innovation the Armed Forces have realized over the past two decades and with the goals of current Department of Defense (DOD) leadership. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and senior military leaders are intent on transforming U.S. forces to better prepare for 21st century challenges. Among other things, according to the DOD Transformation Planning Guidance of April 2003, pursuing transformation means "the Department must align itself with the information revolution not just by exploiting information technology, but by developing information-enabled organizational relationships and operating concepts." Put differently, the emerging American way of war means fighting first for information dominance.
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Nothing better exemplifies this bold push for transformation and information dominance than the DOD commitment to make information operations (IO) a core military competency. On October 30, 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld signed the Information Operations Roadmap, a detailed plan being implemented by the Pentagon. This article introduces the IO roadmap to a broader military audience to stimulate debate on its implications.
The 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review identified information operations as one of six operational goals for DOD transformation. It required the Department to treat it, along with intelligence and space assets, not simply as an enabler of current forces but as a core capability of future forces. Defense Planning Guidance for fiscal years 2004-2009 directed that a roadmap be developed for making IO a core military competency, fully integrated into deliberate and crisis action planning and capable of being executed as part of supported and supporting operations. The result was the Information Operations Roadmap.
The roadmap charts a course for developing IO into a mature warfighting capability and a core joint competency. It is designed to enable capabilities to keep pace with threats and exploit opportunities afforded by innovation and information technologies. Lessons learned from Iraqi Freedom underscore the validity of its recommendations.
A Core Military Competency
The key assumption underlying the IO roadmap is that exploiting information for decision-making has become critical for military success. Accordingly, it must be treated on a par with ground, maritime, air, and special operations. Core military competency is a common expression but is not well defined. Intuitively, it might be considered a set of priority capabilities organized for clear military purposes of overriding importance. Secretary Rumsfeld, in the preface to the roadmap, noted that a core competency is one for which the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the services, and combatant commands share a common appreciation. He articulated more specific criteria within the roadmap. To become a core competency, IO requires policies and procedures that:
* define IO, provide a common understanding of its functions, and clarify authorities and boundaries for execution
* delegate maximum authority to commanders to plan and execute integrated IO.
IO further needs plans, operations, and experiments that:
* incorporate IO in contingency planning within all joint force headquarters
* integrate it into the broader development of new operational concepts
* include it in all major training regimes and exercises.
IO force development is made possible by:
* four-star combatant commander advocacy of experimentation, concept development, and defining needed capabilities
* streamlined organizational and command and control relationships
* a trained and educated career force
* joint program equivalents to develop dedicated information capabilities.
The central objective of the roadmap is to accelerate the transition of IO to a core military competency by providing a way ahead on all of these requisite activity areas. This article summarizes the roadmap's contents in five major areas: IO policy, effective command and control and supporting organizations, a trained and ready career force, focused analytic and intelligence support, and enhanced core information capabilities.
Policy: Achieving a Common Framework
Until now, the lack of common understanding among the services, combatant commands, and defense agencies impeded improving IO capabilities. The construct promulgated in the 1996 DOD directive on information operations and the 1998 Joint Publication 3-13, Joint Doctrine for Information Operations, proved too broad for implementation. The depiction was really no more than a basket of 13 highly disparate activity areas linked only by their general relevance to militarily useful information. While it was hoped that the broad grouping would provide a center of mass for IO activities, it actually retarded progress by reducing understanding to a tautology: information operations are operations relating to information. As the services applied the concept, they did not uniformly equip or train their forces. In turn, combatant commanders did not generate requirements specific enough to act on or fully integrate IO into their plans and orders.
