Buoyed by its decisive win in Iraq, the U.S. is betting billions that the information technology system that helped defeat Saddam Hussein will evolve into a more potent weapon than cluster bombs and howitzers.
A detailed feature article on the U.S. military's modernization effort to prepare for 'network-centric warfare'.
Technology is liberating the U.S. Defense Department from the chains of a single location by enabling it to become a network-centric department. The initiative to create a virtual Pentagon calls for taking advantage of advances in networking, Internet protocol, videoconferencing, mass storage and data transmitting technologies. These capabilities would allow military personnel to continue to collaborate and communicate in emergency situations even if systems within the Pentagon are damaged.
John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt present a five point plan to re-organize 21st century armies for "netwar" against "bands of swarming 14th century terrorists."
"The United States is at war with a foe that is, as the cliche has it, "a shadowy terrorist network," a multinational private army whose nodes and lines of communication reach invisibly and murderously across national borders. It's centipedal, multiheaded, hard to find, difficult to kill. Don't be fooled by familiar-seeming before-and-after images of bomb damage or shots of jet fighters streaking off the decks of aircraft carriers: This is a new kind of war -- netwar."
Military strategists are envisioning future conflicts where U.S. forces execute complex maneuvers on the basis of high-speed data flowing to vehicles and even individuals from unattended sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Edward Rothstein compares the global terrorist networks with the Internet (using clever allusions to Sherlock Holmes), that was designed to withstand (nuclear) attacks against any of its nodes. He argues that such a decentralized, multiply connected network of loosely coupled agents would be hardly affected by traditional bombing raids.
David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla explain their theory of "Netwar" -- the idea that future combatants will use use network forms of organization, doctrine, strategy, and technology attuned to the information age. They close with an examination of how Netwar theory can help policymakers in responding to the al Qaeda terrorist network.
An interesting comparison between Bin Laden's terrorist network and the peer-to-peer Napster network. The author considers the parallels between the tactics used to shut down Napster and potential strategies against terrorist networks.
A fascinating and accessible analysis of the new kind of war that the September 11th terrorist attack portends. The author argues that future adversaries will organize themselves into 'distributed networks' that will require a different method of attack and defense. "It takes a tank to fight a tank. It takes a network to fight a network."