5 A CRITICAL VIEW OF NETWORK CENTRIC WARFARE DOCTRINE
It should not be surprising that command technology, released from the control of systems analysis, should try to network the military force. Indeed, by the time command technology escaped the rigors of systems analysis, the commercial world was already in the middle of the Internet age. Many technologists were therefore naturally interested in exploring the advantages of networked computers. Since the newly developed Internet technology promised, like any other technology would, some measure of utility for military operations, command technology became exceedingly interested in incorporating information technology into military systems.
However, the habits formed under the old acquisition system had not yet died off completely; command technology still felt the need to justify its natural desire to pursue information technology in terms of military advantage. As we have indicated in the previous chapter, the doctrine of Network Centric Warfare is the embodiment of that consuming need for self-justification. Since the proponents of this doctrine found it impossible to justify their ideas concerning the development of information technology within the confines of the conventional concept of war, they decided to present their idea as a revolution in military affairs destined to change fundamentally the concept of war. By taking the position that information technology would enable us to fight our enemies in a totally different way than we have ever fought them before, the proponents are no longer under any obligation to justify their doctrine in terms of military advantage because those advantages are already presupposed in the new definition of what war is.
Like all revolutions, Network Centric Warfare does violence to the established order. Whether revolutionary violence leads to progress or not, is usually ascertained much later in history when the weight of evidence has settled itself firmly one way or another. In the case of Network Centric Warfare, however, we would argue that one need not wait for the verdict of history; the violence it inflicts upon the military establishment already appears to fly in the face of much historic experience, with all the cumulated knowledge about war and human behavior that it contains, and contradicts simple common sense.
There are many points of contention with the Network-Centric vision. In the following survey, mainly intended to identify for further consideration the general fault lines of the Network-Centric position, we only focus on the most important five: its intellectual provenance, its instinct for ideological exaggeration, its fundamental dependence on information superiority, its readiness to therefore discard the current war machine in favor of a new one before the proof is in, and its self-defeating character.