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Strategic implications of information technology development for military affairs

Обновлено 08.03.2024 05:46

 

The information society focuses on its information components in all their diversity. Joining the information civilization simultaneously affects the expansion of the use of information technologies, both for peaceful and military purposes. At the same time, there are options for moving the business forward, since it has great opportunities to solve problems, but there are options for the military to come to the fore, whose tasks can be both very important and supported by large human and financial resources.

Simultaneously with the advent of new tools and changes in the security space itself, tasks and goals are changing, and all this is interconnected in a certain way.

One can cite the opinion of US Deputy Secretary of Defense P. Wolfowitz: "We are moving from a border that focused in the past on known threats to a more flexible border based on the ability to protect ourselves from changing and unknown threats, from a focus on programs and platforms to a focus on results from segmented information and closed information architecture to network information and open architecture". We are talking about a fundamental change in the entire paradigm of war.

However, in all such cases, a paradigm shift in the world takes place in parallel, since any new technology, wherever it first appears, always begins to develop in the most popular industries.

Having received rapid development, information technologies were able to reshape conventional military operations, while changing strategy and tactics. We will consider these changes below.

Network warfare (J. Arkwilla and D. Ronfeldt).

J. Arkwilla and D. Ronfeldt emphasized that the network war does not end only with the Internet. The information revolution strengthened the network form of the organization, which was used for military purposes.

The information revolution has also created the dependence of warfare on information and communication. The growing role of non-state actors and network forms of organization have combined to recreate the possibility of September 11th.

A new kind of network war against hierarchical war (illustrated by the events of September 11 and subsequent events) arose as a result of new information opportunities. In fact, the network structure is broken geographically, but loose informationally. Each structural must be combined cognitively.

It follows that physical discontinuity should be compensated by an increase in information and cognitive connectivity.

The latter type of connectedness probably affects the growth of radicalism. The network structures of terrorism have brought to life new methods of combating them, including attempts to control the narrative that spreads on the network, since it forms the connectivity of network participants, replacing them with territorial proximity.

The world has made the transition from the era of geopolitics to a new geo-economy.

However, today geostrategy is beginning to be realized in the cognitive sphere: a typical American phrase, which can be traced back to Sun Tzu, is this: wars are lost in the minds of generals and soldiers.

If earlier victory was won in the field of geopolitics, then in geo-economics, now actions have shifted to the sphere of cognitive space.

The information revolution is changing both the weapons system and the target system, resulting in a transition, for example, to non-lethal weapons, as well as to an attack aimed at enemy electronic systems.

J. Arkville and J. Ronfeldt sees future opportunities in protecting the value system of society, since information is not only important as a process, but also performs a structural role programming the organization of the system. The authors believe that in the future, the information revolution will make ideas more important than material objects.

Based on all these reasons, there is a proposal that the information strategy should become a separate dimension of the grand strategy.

Moreover, new information technology applications are constantly emerging, for which society is not ready. A striking example of such a new realization was the Zapatista movement in Mexico, which, through links between non-governmental organizations in various countries, proved able to stay within the framework of both guerrilla and information warfare. The standard phenomenon has repeated itself, when the existing structure begins to act as a large one, having received the support of the information space, and is able to change priorities.

The information strong becomes really strong, while the really strong, but information weak structure begins to be perceived as really weak.

New technologies stimulate the emergence of new forms of organization, which, in turn, can disrupt the existing balance of power, gaining a place under the sun. In response, the armed forces must also transform to combat them, as happened, for example, with special forces that have received the rights to global applications.

D. Fram and R. Pearl emphasize that the attack on the World Trade Center cost not just one hundred thousand dollars, but behind it is a recruited, trained hundred jihadi fighters, the maintenance of the camps where they live, as well as the entire infrastructure of extremist Islam.

It is proposed to analyze network structures in the structures of these five levels: - organizational level: organizational structure; - narrative level: which stories function; - the doctrinal level: strategies and methods; - technological level: information systems; - social level: personal connections that ensure trust and loyalty.

The network organization as a new phenomenon has become very widespread, because it corresponds to those new, which are often just being formed, realities of the world, for which the old hierarchical forms are not yet ready.

The network-centrist war (A Cebrowski).

Admiral A. Cebrowski, who was responsible for the transformation of all armed forces at the Pentagon, speaks of the third globalization that the world entered after September 11. If the first globalization lasted from 1800 to the great depression of the 30s of the XX century, the second - from the Second World War to the end of the 90s, then the third is just beginning. Each globalization is characterized by a sharp change in the rules of the game and the introduction of new ones. So the current attempts by the United States to maintain its dominance are associated with new realities that they no longer control. Moreover, the term "forced empire" has even emerged.

Today, the world is full of threats, as a result of which its structure has changed: now weapons of mass destruction can fall to a new type of players who do not even reach the level of states.

The parallel development of information technology has led to the transition of these new non-state players to a new level. By the way, this is where a new type of structurality arises - a network that violates the previous type of structurality based on territorial proximity.

J. Let him talk in this aspect about the democratization of technologies that allow non-state players to do what in the past only states could do.

If a conventional war is waged within the physical space, the cold war took place within the information space, then today's cognitive war, which led to the tragedy of September 11, was aimed at seizing virtual space. It is probably possible to talk about the concept of information and virtual dominance, which eventually leads to the erosion of civilizational boundaries, and about the surrender of one's civilizational space. Interestingly, the heroics of the virtual post-Soviet space are saturated with pirate-type types - for example, cops or a brigade, there are players who are able to act with the fundamental loss of all other members of the "team". In fact, we are looking at a post-Soviet western, where not law reigns, but force that changes hands. Heroics as a category must necessarily manifest itself. If in Soviet times she was consciously associated with such types as a worker and a collective farmer, who personified the triumph of physical labor, then later an engineer or other representatives of non-physical labor appeared (or mixed types - for example, officers combining two types of labor).

A. Cebrowski speaks of the American way of war as a very special way. Three types of war are defined: system-level wars (for example, "cold"), wars at the state-state level, as well as emerging wars, leading groups of individuals.

A. Cebrowski talks about the role of a system administrator who does not stop someone, but maintains the system in working order. In the same system area, it can be placed as an orientation towards proactive actions, since, as she believes, reactive actions are punitive. Troops must now look more like special forces, both because of their increasing mobility and because they have to operate with minimal support from home.

In an insufficiently clearly formulated form, the author distinguishes between horizontal and vertical consequences. The September 11 shocks are an undoubted vertical shock that caused many consequences. But at the same time, he also tends to consider the war in Iraq as a variant of vertical shock, because he believes that it is more interesting for the United States to move, seizing the initiative, creating new vertical shocks. The systematics of complex adaptive systems and chaos easily fits this ideology, where small changes in initial conditions can lead to significant changes in the output. Hence, it becomes possible to change these initial conditions when seizing the initiative.

If the actions of the terrorists on September 11 were defined as a network war, and here the analyses of J. R.R. Tolkien came out on top. The corresponding actions of the US army in Iraq were perceived and presented as a network-centrist war.

The term "network-centric warfare" has been translated into Russian as "network-centric warfare", and we will use this option.

A. Cebrowski connects the emergence of the network-centrist war with the transition from platform-centric programming to network-centric, which affects the growing role of the Internet. The shift to online forms in business also creates an opportunity for more flexible and more dynamic actions. In fact, all this is probably a response to the sharply increasing dynamics of the environment.

From all that has been said, it follows that the military could not help but change the tactics of warfare. The natural transition was the transition from an orientation towards attrition of the enemy to an orientation towards control speed and synchronization, when individual units are able to make the necessary decisions themselves that correspond to the general orientation.

Acceleration of control has three components:

the informational advantage gives a deep understanding of the combat situation, and not just an increase in the "raw" invoice;

actions with different speed and precision achieve massive effects as opposed to the massive power of the past;

as a result, there is a cessation of the enemy's actions and a shock that stops his strategy.

There is another important consequence formulated by the authors. They rightly believe that each new revolution in military affairs generates a new elite.

J. Garstka connects the essence of this type of military action with the possibility of exchanging information among geographically separated elements of power. The study of the relationship between information and combat power of new analytical tools and new mental models.

Cognitive space is interpreted by them as the space of the mind, as a sphere of the unknown, where such phenomena as leadership, morality, public opinion, knowledge of the situation, and the cohesion of combat units are located.

We are looking at the results of really general changes in the functioning of our world, its separation from the material component and shift towards the information component, even the place of decision-making can radically change. So, in the case of the war in Afghanistan, decisions were often made not in Afghanistan itself, but at a Pace in Florida, where the central command is located.

Not only has the informational emphasis brought novelty, but now the cognitive emphasis has become dominant. After all, the physical and informational components are aimed at achieving an effect in the enemy's head. As P. Murdoch writes: "The purpose of war is to achieve political goals by using organized violence to influence the minds and behavior of hostile leadership." Therefore, we are talking about behavioral results, about an operation aimed at a result (effects-based operations).

Network structures have given rise to network warfare and network-centrist warfare, the main characteristic of which is the withdrawal of the mandatory physical concentration of the mass, now geographically distributed.

The preservation of its strength and unity is achieved thanks to new information opportunities, when all actors exchange information as much as possible, setting their information dominance.

This is like internal information dominance; traditionally, this period is considered in the external dimension, when obstacles are created for the use of their information resources by the enemy.

A war based on entropy (M. Herman).

An analysis approach called "war is based on entropy" has also become a new option. The purpose of this paradigm is to destroy the enemy's order while maintaining its connectedness. This paradigm is designed to change the paradigm of attrition, and is usually used in the analysis and planning of military operations. Prior to this, modeling did not take into account such characteristics as morale, morale, discipline, and fitness. A combat unit without entropy can realize its full physical potential.

While previous models focused on quantitative aspects, the entropy-based model is more balanced, providing a new dimension for determining the effectiveness of combat operations. Accordingly, a computer game based on this new ideology was created in four years. Moreover, the military is turning to commercial structures for the creation of such business games, which can do this much faster.

The dynamics of changes in the new security context dictates new options for the strategy and tactics of the armed forces, new types of combat groups, which, by the way, was most vividly demonstrated by the war in Iraq, where the possibilities of using information technology were most clearly manifested.