Sunday, January 25, 2009

Optimizing Navy Information Warfare

"In September 2007, Rear Admiral Edward Deets, the Naval Network Warfare Command Vice Commander and leader of the Navy Information Warfare Community, articulated a new strategic plan to ensure that the new naval warfare area of IO was being developed and integrated to offer maximum capability to military commanders. The community vision was stated as follows:
"The Navy’s Information Warfare (IW) Community delivers overwhelming information superiority to naval and joint commanders. We do this by leading the integration and application of the core capabilities of Information Operations and Signals Intelligence to shape, influence, and defeat select audiences in support of commanders’ objectives. Our community applies signals and information expertise, and attacks, defends and exploits networks to pursue and capitalize on opponent vulnerabilities in the information environment."
Prior to RADM Deets’ guidance, many wondered where the Navy IW Community was headed. Would it completely abandon its SIGINT roots in favor of the new warfare area of IO? This document clearly delineated that SIGINT, in conjunction with IO, would comprise the Information Warfare domain with Naval Network Warfare Command being the executive agent.

In today’s information age, Information Warfare has gained prominence as an effective means of waging war. From a service perspective, the Naval Network Warfare Command and specifically the Navy Information Warfare Community has been tasked to lead in providing manning, training, and equipment to make this form of warfare a reality.

While this relatively new requirement brings tremendous opportunity to the community, it has also presented many challenges. Specifically, effective Information Operations integration and a well-defined career path that provides officers with experience, education, and skill sets in both Signals Intelligence and Information Operations have evaded the community."

Click on the link below to read the rest of LCDR Chad Smith's, Sep 2008 NPS Thesis -
"OPTIMIZING NAVY INFORMATION WARFARE: A SYSTEMS ENGINEERING APPROACH"

1 comment:

Bill Leigher said...

LCDR Smith's NPS thesis poses a series of questions about IW community develop and choices between SIGINT and IO. If you haven't read it, take a look. Thanks for posting the link. I don't necessarily argues that either has a more prominent role nor for balance. Instead that SIGINT in the Information Age is IO.