Curbing Innovation / 10

10 CONCLUSION

There are two major lessons to be learned from the reading of this book: one is that military technology is not, and should not try to be, commercial technology, and the other is that modeling and simulation is not, and should not pretend to be, systems analysis. It is only by ignoring both of these lessons that Network Centrists managed to reach the exaggerated conclusion that information technology will produce a revolution in military affairs.

Commercial technology thrives upon freedom. Inventors, bent on making a fortune for themselves by coming up with some new product, fundamentally depend upon three types of freedom: the freedom to look at the world in a new way which always accompanies the creative mind; the freedom of choice that is available to them when they decide the specific market they want to access with their product; and the freedom to fail that comes with the creative process. The ideas they pursue are those that fit their natural inventiveness, the market they choose is the one where their natural inventiveness intersects the possibility of attracting customer interest for their invention. If they succeed in inventing a potentially useful product and succeed in convincing customers to buy that product, they stand to make a lot of money. That financial success affects only them and a relatively small segment of the surrounding population. Conversely, if they fail, either because they failed to produce a commercially viable product or because they failed to access an adequate portion of the available market, they would go bankrupt. That failure would only affects them personally and the same relatively small segment of society that would have profited from a successful outcome of the enterprise, and even those localized effects are often quite correctible. Consequently, development of commercial technology requires no controlling authority and indeed admits of none; it just happens.

Military technology, on the other hand, thrives upon external control. Inventors of military technology must look at the world the way the military does if their invention is to be of any use, they have little, if any, choice in the way the military applies their invention to the conduct of war, and, given the high cost of failure, have no real freedom to fail. Consequently, as we have argued in this book, development of military technology requires a higher purpose to control its activities. That higher purpose must always point to national security, for if military technology failed to deliver the capability that it promised to deliver, it would be a lot more than just some individuals and the community connected to them that would suffer from that failure; what is at stake with military technology is not personal interest but national survival. Therefore, the consequences of failed military technology development would hardly be correctible.

Network Centric Warfare is a doctrine of war born out of the mistaken notion that military technology is the same as commercial technology and that, therefore, the former should learn and freely borrow from the latter. Mesmerized by the apparent revolution in economic affairs brought about by the Internet, and confused by the complexities of the international security environment that followed the end of the Cold War, defense planners have begun to forget the difference between military and commercial technologies and are slavishly copying all the activities that transpired in the commercial world, as if military technology were as free to develop as the commercial one always is.

This transformation started with the much more limited, and perhaps justifiable, tendency to use whenever possible commercial off-the-shelf technologies for military applications and ended with the unlimited quest for the commercialization of the entire military establishment. Not only are all the new military technologies unprecedentedly being developed in the open, as if they were so many commercial activities, but private companies are also being increasingly used to perform military functions, despite the fact that they are not committed to the goals and ethos of the military. This predilection for out-sourcing has the same root as Network Centrism and therefore accompanies it wherever it goes.

This commercialized military technology, advocated as the way of the future by the proponents of Network Centric Warfare, recognizes no boundaries because commercial technology recognizes none. This unbounded character is responsible for the many destructive consequences of Network Centrism documented in the book. Therefore, there is a growing need to curb-in the natural instincts of this commercialized military technology.

But, curbing military technology requires two fundamental things: a purpose to inform the curbing process, and a method for deciding how, and how much, of the curbing process to undertake. The first requirement has become a new concern for the western nations because, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the old scenario-based system of control has lost its power to inform. The second, because the imminent demise of the art of systems analysis has deprived their military establishments of the only means of producing informed decisions. As we have argued in this book, trying to replace the deliberative method of systems analysis with the largely non-deliberative method of modeling and simulations will not lead to informed decisions. Good decision makers need quantitative deliberation to help them understand the assumptions that underlie the available alternatives and to help identify the critical factors involved in choosing between those alternatives. Modeling and simulation, instead of helping decision makers understand the universe in which they operate, provides them with a ready made answer whose validity they can not judge because the assumptions, as well as the driving factors, are irretrievably hidden within the closed structure of a complex computer model.

This book has attempted to address both of these features of the curbing process. It suggested that the old scenario-based planning mechanism be replaced with a new, scenario-independent one designed to reduce the singular vulnerabilities in our military posture, and it used the examples in Chapter 8 to remind people of the extraordinary informative powers of systems analysis. This clarion call on behalf of systems analysis is every bit as important as, if not even more important than, the call for a new planning paradigm to control command technology. Indeed, if one routinely used systems analysis to decide what technologies to buy next, Network Centrism would never have been allowed to flourish.

Absent the benefits of systems analysis, the western nations have recently proceeded to order the creation of the “new force” by fiat, and then demanded from their military establishments that they overcome any difficulties, be they technological, managerial, or operational, if, and when, they arise. This is a path familiar to those that have seen a Utopian vision being implemented. As history abundantly shows, Utopian movements accept no fundamental disagreement with the general vision that guides their actions and, instead of tempering the guiding vision in light of the possible difficulties it may encounter, they prefer to take each such disagreement as one more challenge to overcome no matter what the cost to society.

It is time, therefore, to bring the uncontrolled character of modern military technological development into relief and to demand some correcting action. Unless we manage to find a new purpose for controlling the development of military technology and to resurrect the practice of systems analysis, command technology will continue to run blindly towards a dangerously Utopian vision of the future. Deprived of these controlling structures, command technology can not even recognize, let alone avoid, the dangers consequent upon ignoring the lessons discussed in this book. If the western nations continue to restructure their military forces in such a way as to fully implement the Network Centric vision, their capability would become significantly more susceptible to action by an ingenious enemy and unwisely dependent upon the assumption that their own military personnel are infinitely perfectible.