Friday, January 16, 2009

Advocacy for Information Operations

Developing Joint Information Operations Warriors
by Lt Col James Pickle - 2006

Recommendations:

Establish senior leader advocacy. The DoD is starting to see O-6 and O-7 advocacy at the joint and combatant command level. This is a great start. True advocacy, and thereby funding, must come from a senior Flag Officer/General Officer advocate at the Service level. The Services control the major portion of the DoD budget. Without three and four star support IO will limp along through the diligent efforts of iron majors/lieutenant commanders at the operational and tactical level but languish at the strategic level.

Strategic direction and advocacy is required for IO to improve and ease access. Since their creation just last year, the Board of Advisors is making strong forward progress. Identifying joint IO billets and the education requirements for the respective billets is next on the BoA activities. The final recommendation is ironic.

Use IO to improve IO. Current IO personnel don’t use IO to promote or advance IO. In fact to a certain extent IO is its own worse enemy. Many IO programs are compartmentalized and even basic IO documents are close held limiting visibility to the core of the military.

Without at least some visibility into the IO world why would a new officer want to be an IO warrior?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Amen to all the above. Beside the stovepiping you refer to, and the compartmentalization, the bigger problem is the huge disparity of definitions of IO between Services, the practical operational differences and the lack of a system of systems originating at the USG level (leading to uncoordinated and nonintegrated messages).