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Abstract. Dr Alfred Kaufman has written a stimulating and unorthodox book.
He argues that US defense planning has gone wrong since
the end of the Cold War, and he makes some
provocative suggestions about how to put things right. Along the
way, he provides an extended critique of Network Centric Warfare.
Dr
Kaufman borrowed the phrase "Command Technology" from Chicago historian William
McNeill. McNeill uses it to refer to "a special relationship
between defense officials and inventors." The officials say what they
want a weapon to do; the inventors to come up
with designs. Kaufman uses the phrase as a label for
a "means of controlling [military] technological innovation".
For Kaufman the heart
of the challenge in "Command Technology" is to design weapons
"that will reflect ... our national security interests, not the
natural instincts of the technological community." In his view, the
US has relied on two related mechanisms to do so,
for most of the period since World War II. The
first was the planning scenario that envisioned war with the
Soviet Union.
The second mechanism was "Systems Analysis." Dr Kaufman uses
this phrase to refer to the set of practices imported
to the Pentagon under Robert McNamera. He also uses it
to refer to the best features of analytic thinking more
broadly, to include:- "use of intellectual discourse and scientific method"
- "choice of
weapons ... on the basis of reproducible, quantitative measures ...
"explicit concern for the key assumptions driving military decisions..."
- "a systematic,
open, and quantitative method of deliberation ..."
- "forcing decision-makers into an
adversarial conversation that unfolds in the clear air of quantitative
analysis ..."
Dr Kaufman is not a naïve quantifier. He is
clearly aware of the limitations of such analysis: "... decisions
are not entirely rational processes; one can never actually decide
anything by ... tallying up ... the pros and the
cons ..." "[A]t the end of the day," he writes,
"a proper decision calls for a good measure of judgment...".
Nor
does Dr Kaufman remember the "heydays of Systems Analysis" in
an unrealistically positive light. He says that "cases in which
the analytic community woefully overstepped its bounds and was thus
instrumental in the Department reaching the wrong decision, abound".
According to
Dr Kaufman, Systems Analysis became increasingly ineffective at guiding military
technological innovation after the end of the Cold War, for
two reasons. First, the analytic community was unable to find
planning scenarios "so general ... as to encompass ... future
... Wars" without "... lead[ing] ... to a significant degree
of over-arming ...". Second, computer technology encouraged "... the analytic
community to believe that they could simply replace ... systems
analysis with computer simulation ..." This was bound to fail
because "one cannot seriously expect to gain from a simulation
any understanding that has not already been used in constructing
it".
Kaufman sees Network Centric Warfare (NCW) as one consequence—and a
largely pernicious one—of the decline of Systems Analysis. Therefore he
devotes most of the rest of his book to a
detailed exposition of NCW theory, and to explaining its limitations.
Kaufman
sees NCW theory as embodying a series of hypotheses. First,
networking of "battlefield entities" will produce "shared information" thence "shared
knowledge" thence, via collaboration, "shared understanding". This will in turn
enable "synchronization", or more accurately "orchestration", of our force. All
of these developments will in turn permit a networked force
to make decisions and execute orders faster. By so doing,
the networked force will get inside its enemy's OODA loop
"to the point that he either cannot react coherently or
cannot act at all".
Kaufman subjects the theory just described to
several sorts of criticisms. First, he points out that the
hypotheses just described are not valid unless a large number
of conditions hold. He criticizes NCW advocates for seeing such
conditions as "challenges to be overcome" rather than premises that
may or may be supported by rigorous empirical tests. He
persuasively argues that DoD should test these hypotheses empirically before
"walking too far down the path to the promised [NCW]
revolution in military affairs".
Kaufman criticizes NCW theory on other grounds.
Even if we could build a network-centric force, enemies who
didn’t want to submit would "fight a different war ...
according to different rules ... by different means." He points
out that NCW theory "has nothing to say about such
an asymmetric war." The Iraqi aftermath underscores his point with
each passing day.
Kaufman also disputes the argument that that "networking
translates into information superiority". He says this claim "overestimates man’s
capacity to deal with contradictory information" and underestimates the enemy.
After all, networking yields information superiority if and only if
the enemy doesn’t successfully anticipate and react. Kaufman remarks that
we ought not to "underestimate the power of an enemy
that resorts to deception and evasion".
Kaufman makes several proposals about
how to make things better. He recommends that we not
even try to come up with a "predictive" planning scenario
for the post-Cold War world. Instead, we should posit an
asymmetric enemy that would seek to exploit our "singular vulnerabilities."
To identify those vulnerabilities, Kaufman recommends several steps. First, identify
qualities that our "war machine" needs (for example, "the ability
to be at the right place at the right time").
Next, specify the operational effects needed to achieve the desired
quality (for example, the ability to uncover the right place
and right time) and the capabilities needed to achieve those
operational effects (for example, improved ISR systems). Having done all
that, ask if an asymmetric enemy could prevent us from
achieving the operational effects we seek. Al Qaeda did so
through the simple expedient of hiding; we had to rely
on ground operations to overcome that tactic. And a "singular
vulnerability" remains, in that it’s hard for us to find
foes when they have supporters in the local population. DoD
needs to identify such vulnerabilities, and come up with a
menu of techniques for coping.
Kaufman has written a challenging and
provocative book. Unfortunately, his editors allowed him to rely far
too much on a misleading anthropomorphic shorthand (for example "command
technology eventually went astray and ... created the theory of
Network Centric Warfare.") He too seldom quotes and disputes actual
statements by the people who concocted the theory. That’s too
bad. Those who concocted Net Centric theory, such as it
is, have much to answer for. Kaufman’s book could have
done more to spur a healthy debate by taking them
on more directly.
Similarly, Dr, Kaufman does too little to link
his discussion of particular topics to the broader literature on
defense issues. For example, he uses our Afghan intervention as
an example of how an enemy can defeat our ISR
by hiding, but does not mention Stephen Biddle’s detailed analysis
of that campaign. He discusses cohesion at length, but does
not tie his discussion to the broad military literature on
that subject.
No book is perfect. Nor is any review. This
one does scant justice to the complexity and originality of
Dr Kaufman’s book. Read it to see what’s wrong with
defense analysis and how we might do better.
Related topics:
network centric warfare, book review
View first page of "A.I. Kaufman, Curbing Innovation: How Command Technology Limits Network Centric Warfare, Argos Press, Canberra, 2004 (ISBN 0-9580238-4-0)"
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