Transformational Concepts and Capabilities - Information Operations

Information Operations (IO) provide, in coordination and synchronization with other effects-based joint activities, an asymmetric advantage to shape the battlespace from forward-deployed maritime forces by employing capabilities including electronic warfare, computer network defense and attack (CND/CNA), psychological operations (PSYOP), military deception, and operational security. Forward deployed naval forces provide joint force commanders with persistent platforms from which to execute joint information operations using embedded capabilities. The Navy and Marine Corps are developing transformational concepts and capabilities that will be employed to influence, affect, or defend information, information systems and decision-making in support of joint effects-based operations.

The Navy has taken several steps to invigorate work in this area. Efforts are underway to create a top-down Concept of Operations for IO laying out organizational responsibilities and guidance regarding the conduct of Information Operations. A Capstone Requirements Document for Navy IO is also under development. In addition, Information Operations has been designated a primary warfare area and a new career force is being created to develop and sustain IO professionals. New IO billets have been created at many levels, including the designation of a three star operational commander for IO at the newly established Naval Network Warfare Command, the posting of IO specialists in OPNAV, and the inclusion of an IO Warfare Commander within each battle group.

Naval Transformation Roadmap

The Benefits of Keeping a Journal

Journaling allows leaders to clarify their thoughts and feelings, thereby gaining valuable self-knowledge. It's often a good problem-solving tool where one can hash out a problem and arrive at a solution, which is easier on paper. When we experience a traumatic event, sometimes our emotions dominate our thinking. Journaling about traumatic events allows us to engage both the emotional and rational sides of our brain to make sure we're bringing our best possible thinking to bear.

Reduces stress – Journaling has been proven to reduce stress. Once you're journaling, you won't carry as much of what you have written about within you. It is on paper or in the computer. By journaling, you give yourself a powerful form of self-expression, and through that expression you gain clarity, release, and relief.

Problem Solving – Journaling is an effective way to think through problems until you reach a point of clarity. Putting your problems on paper avoids linear thinking about more complex problems. It allows you to see the many possible solutions so you can evaluate how each one will affect the people involved. Journaling allows you to overcome the brain's functional limitations by expanding the mental working memory that's available for problem solving.

Define Your Dreams and Goals – "Our dreams are the visions that shape our lives. Do you know what your dreams are? Have you stopped dreaming? Sometimes we do. At different points in our journey, both professionally and personally, it is so easy to get caught up in surviving that we stop dreaming. When we stop dreaming, we slowly begin to disengage from our work, from our relationships, and from life itself." (The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly) What do you want to accomplish? Journaling helps you to actually see and better understand what you want and what is important to you. It gives you the opportunity to explore your dreams and develop the goals that will allow you to realize your life's purpose. You create a personal checklist of things you want to accomplish and develop the action plans to make them happen.

Helps focus – Writing in a journal creates more personal awareness; therefore, more focus on the issues that are important to you. If you want to be a successful leader, you can explore the skills you will need to develop in order to obtain the results you want. You learn to focus on daily leadership opportunities and how you make a difference.

Health benefits – Research has proven that journaling decreases the symptoms of asthma, arthritis, and other health conditions. It improves cognitive functioning while strengthening the immune system which in turn prevents a host of illnesses. Journaling is very therapeutic and counteracts many of the negative effects of stress.

Charting the Course for a Successful Leader

by Ed Ruggero and Dennis F. Haley

Ethical decisions

Your job is to make decisions. But your duty is to make the right decisions...the ethical decisions. In my first letter to all Flag and General Officers of the Navy and Marine Corps, sent the day I was confirmed as Secretary of the Navy, I stated this duty very frankly: "If we cannot do something ethically, if it is not in keeping with our values--then we just won't do it."

I want to restate that to each and everyone in the Naval Service...to make sure that every Sailor, Marine and civil servant knows that that is the standard. If we can't do something ethically, I don't want it done. We need to develop and maintain--within each of us individually, and collectively within the entire Naval Service--the character to make ethical decisions.

Former Secretary of the Navy, John Dalton

My First Chief

"My first chief had a big impact on me. I still look at what he did," Campa said. "When he spoke, he spoke with such credibility because he had such a strong knowledge of his ship, his rate and the people that he led; that inspired me to want to do well for him. He planted some seeds — but I have been fortunate throughout my career to have good, strong, deckplate leaders -— those who kept their focus on the people and measured their success through them.

"That is what I tried to bring back with deckplate leadership. That kind of leadership is traditional of the chiefs' mess and critical to our people and our Navy."

Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Joe Campa during his change of office ceremony with new MCPON West

Widen Your Outlook

First, you have the opportunity to widen your outlook and broaden your horizons and to gain the kind of perspective rarely possible under the pressure of daily duties.

Second, you have the opportunity to escape from the preconceptions, the prejudices, and the viewpoints associated with the necessarily limited scope of virtually all operating jobs.

Third, you have the opportunity to advance in knowledge and understanding of many great and complex problems which face this country and the world today; and to see these problems, not in the context of the needs and interests of a particular service or agency, but of the Government and the Nation as a whole.

To sum up: Here you will have the opportunity to broaden your intellectual horizons, escape from the limitations of professional prejudices and interests , and gain in understanding of many difficult and complex problems facing this country today and in the years ahead.

General Mundy's comments to the incoming class of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1958.

The Official IW Community Blog Is Back !!

Great news !! The Official IW Community Blog is back and RADM Deets is moderating it. Check with your IW leadership to learn how to log in on the new site. You'll need a CAC enabled computer to login. Use it or lose it.

"If we are to have frank and open discussion I need you to understand that some of our comments will be of a "proprietary" nature and thus not appropriate for release beyond the wardroom.

Also remember that many of our retired officers are contractors so much of what is on our blog won't be releasable to them.

I've created this to allow open dialogue. I will regularly participate. I hope all of you will too.
Best, EHD"

Quote from RADM Ned Deets

Can you lead...

Can you lead your people without seeking to control?
Can you open and close the gates in harmony with nature?
Can you be understanding without trying to be wise?
Can you create without possessiveness?
Accomplish without taking credit?
Lead without ego?

This is the highest power.

Lao-Tzu

Navy Tradition

The Navy has a great tradition, especially in warfighting. It is not the ship, it is not the weapons - it has been, is, and always will be the leader. In times of crisis, the Navy looks to its leaders to set the tone and establish the priorities to achieve victory - in combat and out. In the end though, it is in combat that everything meets its ultimate evaluation. We are informed and influenced by those who have come before and the sacrifices they have made and have ordered others to make. We should always look to their example to ensure that we meet that standard.

CDR Salamander

Sailor - with a capital "S"

1-16. Identifying Navy and Marine Corps Personnel . . . Capitalize "Sailor" and "Marine" when referring to members of the U.S. Navy or U.S. Marine Corps.

Secretary of the Navy, John Dalton in 1994

SECNAVINST 5216.5D, Navy Correspondence Manual

Reflections on Leadership

More broadly, if as an officer one does not tell blunt truths or create an environment where candor is encouraged, then they have done themselves and the institution a disservice. This admonition goes back beyond the roots of our own republic. Sir Francis Bacon was a seventeenth-century jurist and philosopher as well as a confidante of the senior minister of England’s King James. He gave this advice to a protégé looking to follow in his steps at court: “Remember well the great trust you have undertaken; you are as a continual sentinel, always to stand upon your watch to give [the king] true intelligence. If you flatter him, you betray him.”

In the military, as at every university or company in America, there is a focus on teamwork, consensus-building, and collaboration. Yet make no mistake, the time will come when a leader in today’s military must stand alone and make a difficult, unpopular decision, or challenge the opinion of superiors and tell them that they cannot get the job done with the time and the resources available—a difficult charge in an organization built on a “can-do” ethos like America’s Army; or a time when a member of the military will know that what superiors are telling the press or the Congress or the American people is inaccurate. These are the moments when an officer’s entire career may be at risk. What will they do? These are difficult questions that require serious thought over the course of any officer’s career. There are no easy answers.

If they will follow the dictates of their conscience and maintain the courage of their convictions while being respectfully candid with superiors and encouraging candor in others, they will be in good stead to meet the challenges facing them as officers and leaders in the years ahead.

Secretary of Defense, Dr. Robert M. Gates in The United States Army's Senior Professional Journal - Reflections on Leadership

Writing

Other things being equal, a superior rating will invariably be given to the officer who has persevered in his studies of the art of self-expression, while his colleague, who attaches little importance to what may be achieved through working with the language, will be marked for mediocrity.

A moment's reflection will show why this has to be the case and why mastery of the written and spoken word is indispensable to successful officership.

As the British statesman, Disraeli, put it, "Men govern with words." Within the military establishment, command is exercised through what is said which commands attention and understanding and through what is written which directs, explains, interprets or informs.

Battles are won through the ability of men to express concrete ideas in clear and unmistakable language. All administration is carried forward along the chain of command by the power of men to make their thoughts articulate and available to others.

There is no way under the sun that this basic condition can be altered. Once the point is granted, any officer should be ready to accept its corollary - that superior qualification in the use of the language, both as to the written and the spoken word, is more essential to military leadership than knowledge of the whole technique of weapons handling.

It then becomes strictly a matter of personal decision whether he will seek to advance himself along the line of main chance or will take refuge in the excuse offered by the great majority: "I'm just a simple fighting file with no gift for writing or speaking."

From: The Armed Forces Officer, 1950

Study military history

The officer who studies military history along the lines of recreational reading and analytical research will benefit in three ways:

First, he will develop a mind rich in the experience of war in all its aspects. The climate of war will become an integral part of his subconscious being. Without consciously thinking about it he will have a cultivated awareness of the pitfalls which strew the path of the commander and the staff officer, and he will be able to see the possibilities and the dangers of any situation or any course of action.

Secondly, he will develop the power of analysis—the power of breaking up the problem into its component parts, balancing one against the other, and arriving at a sound solution.

Thirdly, it will fill his mind with knowledge of human beings in combat, and that is essential knowledge for the soldier.

Finally, remember that unless your critical analysis of fact is not tempered with sympathy and compassion you will never learn anything about humanity.

From: The Australian Chief of Army Reading List

Write with your eyes open

Candor Sometimes Goes Unrewarded

In today's military, boldness is rewarded only in battle, and sometimes not even then. It's a fact of human nature that leaders tend to promote subordinates who most emulate them. The argument has been made that controversy among military officers should not be played out in public. Unfortunately, controversy played out in private usually dies a very quiet death. To give an idea life, sometimes the only effective way is to make it public, even when doing so might imperil one's career.

And there's the rub. I believe the real threat to serious and open debate has been a single-minded focus on careerism among some officers. This is destructive. In the final analysis, if you wish to advance the cause, you must be willing to put the good of the service over the good of your career (advice I gave to a young officer in "An Open Letter to Lt. Butler" and advice I tried to follow myself).

I received warnings from superior officers that it would be in my best interest to stop writing. Some of this criticism stemmed from the nature of the subject I had chosen to write about. Some of the blame belongs to editors who changed the meaning of the pieces by assigning them eye-catching but off-the-mark titles. The result was the same: intense pressure from a superior officer to stop writing.

In fact, I've been admonished by a flag officer after every piece I've written, usually by a member of my own warfare community.

** Extracted from Captain William J. Toti's USNI December 2008 PROCEEDINGS Article **

Read the entire USNI PROCEEDINGS Article. Click on the link below

Write With Your Eyes Open, Captain William Toti, United States Navy (retired)

The Marketplace of Ideas

In this rapidly globalizing 21st century, our nation and our military are out competing in a marketplace of ideas. We live in a 24/7 news cycle with near instant reporting and widespread dissemination of stories. It is a teeming, tumultuous, and exhausting marketplace. There has been a tremendous push for military professionals to understand, quantify, and assess our ability to compete in this arena. On all fronts, we must excel at strategic communication—the ability to get our message out to the right audience, at the right time, with the proper effect, and in all media.

Each of us has a clear obligation to contribute to this effort, to be a part of the conversation, to help our ideas compete. Our nation was founded on ideas that just could not be repressed—those of freedom and liberty. In 1776, we launched these ideas into a world ruled by a different system. Our ideas faced stiff competition, and throughout the years we have even suffered wars to defend them—wars like today’s struggle against extremists who use terrorism as a weapon, often to suppress freedom of expression. Our second President, John Adams, once wrote that the best way to defend our ideas was through using our minds: “Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.”

Admiral James Stavridis
USNI Proceedings

The United States Navy

is responsible for maintaining control of the sea

and is a ready force on watch at home and overseas,

capable of strong action to preserve the peace

or, of instant offensive action to win in war.

ALL HANDS MAGAZINE, May 1956

GO NAVY ! BEAT ARMY !!