Information Warfare Pioneers Take Top Pentagon Positions.

• Author: Book, Elizabeth G.
• Position: David Alberts, John J. Garstka and Arthur Cebrowski pioneered network-centric warfare - Brief Article

Military planners and policy-makers, for many years, have advocated the need to increase the interoperability of computer networks for battlefield use. Although some progress has been achieved, the reality today is that network-centric warfare is more of an academic concept than an operational reality.

Things could change in the future, however, as the pioneers of network-centric warfare settle into high-level Pentagon posts. These officials will be expected to help bring network-centric warfare to the mainstream of military doctrine and program development.

In 1999, David Alberts, John J. Garstka and Frederick P. Stein published a book tided, "Network-centric Warfare, Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority." A contributor to the book was then-Navy Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski.

Now, Cebrowski, Garstka and Alberts are all working at the Pentagon in positions that allow them to influence the application of network-centric warfare. Cebrowski, recently retired from the Navy, is the Pentagon's director of force transformation. Garstka is the chief technology officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Alberts is the director of research and strategic planning for the assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence (C31). The assistant secretary for C31 is the Pentagon's chief information officer.

Network-centric warfare can be defined as the use of computers, high-speed data links and networking software in combat operations, said Ronald O'Rourke, a national defense specialist at the Congressional Research Service. The application of network-centric warfare means that data gleaned from listening devices, unmanned vehicles, geospatial information and human intelligence is collected and distributed in real time to the military services.

"Network-centric warfare is no longer just someone's idea, but it's being put into practical use and is accruing benefits," said Alberts in a recent interview. "We're developing a state of shared awareness, so that everyone understands what it is, and program managers develop capabilities with an eye toward interoperability, even when that specifically may not be mentioned in program requirement documents.

"We know we have to deploy a robust infrastructure for sharing information," Alberts said. "Not only do we need all the information collected by the Defense Department available in the same place, we need information collected by other people, outside the Defense Department."

Current legacy systems are not interoperable without work-arounds and special...