The drivers behind
the rise of
network centric warfare

Military forces the world over face a series of ever more complex challenges, including attacks from highly empowered individuals as well as malicious states, which now pose national security threats to the proper functioning of critical IT infrastructure.

Climate change affecting agriculture, food and water security will be more and more pronounced going forward. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and tornadoes will continue to put pressure on the military to assist civilian authorities with disaster relief, search and rescue, and humanitarian aid.

It is no exaggeration to say that the complexity of training and equipping for specific missions, organising for force generation, and commanding military personnel has never been greater. And as military forces need to do more with the same or fewer resources, they need to become smarter about how they deploy and command their forces.

This explains why technology, or network centric warfare, is playing an increasingly important role in missions and conflicts alike. Warfare technology such as GPS guided munitions, laser targeting, and satellite communications has grown massively, enabling states that fully leverage technology to gain a decisive upper hand against their adversaries while at the same time saving troops’ lives.

Changing attitudes,
changing outcomes

Where a high proportion of troops would be expected to lose their lives or suffer injuries in past conflicts, this is no longer an acceptable outcome in modern societies that are sensitive to military casualties. The concept of throwing human bodies at a conflict is not tenable, nor particularly effective.

Over time, the number of troops losing their lives in battle has reduced, down from millions in World War 1 and continuing throughout the 20th century. Allied ground forces for the Normandy operation in 1944 and Desert Storm in 1991 were around the same strength at 650,000. 45,000 troops were killed in action in Normandy compared to just 240 in Desert Storm.

Of course military strategy has always been in place, and indeed, the core tenets of successful military operations remain unchanged over time. Nowadays, broad and granular information from networks of sensors, video cameras and even local residents' mobile phones in a warzone can be collected and analysed to paint a much more detailed view of an often rapidly changing situation.

Network centric warfare embodies the way in which the military organises and conducts operations in the information age. As with any technology advancement, it is never just about applying new technology to current platforms, organisations, and doctrines. Network centric warfare is no different. To ensure a high degree of success there needs to be co-evolution of organisation, doctrine, tactics, techniques and procedures.

Moving away from
massing of forces

Past realities have seen how militaries with poor communications and battlespace surveillance capabilities have severely limited the commander’s ability to direct planned operation. To compensate for the fog and friction of war, commanders relied on massive colocation of forces – troops, tanks, ships, and aircrafts – for ease of coordination, hence the notion of massing of forces.

There are at least a couple of drawbacks to this approach. The first is that the concentration of forces presents the adversary with attractive high value targets, which explains the high casualty rate. The second limitation of this approach is that it limits the agility of the force due to its rigid structure.

By contrast, information and network technology have enabled sources of combat power to be freed up from locational constraint without sacrificing cohesion. The essence of network centric warfare is the ability to harness combat power from a geographically dispersed force to have a decisive effect on the adversary – hence massing of effects, rather than forces.

Network centric warfare is therefore an information superiority-enabled concept of operations that generates increased combat power by networking sensors, decision makers, and shooters to achieve shared awareness, increased speed of command, higher tempo of operations, greater lethality, increased survivability, and a degree of self-synchronisation.

An example of how this works in practice is when an attack helicopter senses a column of enemy tanks on the ground. Given the large number of enemy tanks, it won’t be able to address the threat completely on its own with the limited munitions on board.

But by transmitting the sensor information to another shooter such as a long-range artillery unit, the coordinated action of both shooters can lead to an increased effective engagement. Network centric warfare entails a heavy reliance on information and network technology, and as adversaries constantly strive to gain insights into decision cycles to degrade, disrupt and delay military execution, network security is of paramount importance.

The case for encryption

Encryption can be omnipresent throughout the entire network as part of the defence in depth strategy. It is also affordable: most militaries can find the budgets to acquire the technology. And given the long experience of deploying encryption it has now become an easy to deploy technology. Encryption is the foundational bedrock of a solid cyber defence and it is often the last line of defence to thwart cyber-attacks.

Finally, a strong encryption can prove insurmountable to adversaries, and this, contrary to popular belief, goes beyond the strength of the encryption algorithm. It extends to all critical aspects of an encryption program, which includes a secure development life cycle, hardware trust anchors to store cryptographic materials, secure key generation and distribution, supply chain security and tamper proofing.

The case for a strong encryption program has never been greater. Contact us at Asperiq to find out more about our unique, quantum-proof encryption technology.