9.3 REORIENTING THE ACQUISITION PROCESS
We are now finally able to see Network Centrism, not as the final victory of technology over war, but for what it really is, just another new technology whose military value is strictly bounded by the realities of war. These realities of war should not be handled by assumption; we should not, as Network Centrists are doing, assume that our enemies are imperfect and that our own forces are perfect, because such assumptions, being eminently deniable, increase rather than decrease the vulnerability of our military posture. Instead, as we have argued above, we should require that acquisition of information technology be always carefully coupled with the acquisition of complementary technologies, or with the development of complementary strategies and tactics, all designed to address the singular vulnerabilities that reflect the ingenuity of our enemies and the human limitations of our own forces. In other words, the pursuit of the Network Centric vision requires the purchase of significant insurance against the possibility of it being wrong.
Under the circumstances, attainment of the Network Centrist goal is not likely to be a particularly cost-effective enterprise. On the one hand, the need to acquire complementary technologies as insurance against both enemy behavior and own imperfection would make Network Centrism very expensive. On the other hand, its contribution to warfare would only increase the capabilities we already possess in sufficient quantity, leaving existing vulnerabilities untouched. Paying a lot of money for marginal increases in military capability does not make much sense. Therefore, acquisition of military technology should be re-directed. Instead of trying to implement Network Centrism for its own sake, the military acquisition establishment should try to enlist information technology in the service of a new goal, that of consolidating our current capability by denying a real enemy the option of exploiting the vulnerabilities that reside in it.
Obviously, by thus saying that technology should be acquired if, and only if, we can prove that the deniable assumptions upon which its potential advantages usually rest are not easily denied, we are not really saying anything new. One would think that most prudent commanders throughout the history of warfare would have wanted to know that such was the case before having acquired any new technology. What is new in the story presented here, is the realization that, due to the fundamental changes brought about by the end of the Cold War, old habits appear to have been forgotten and people seem to be irresistibly attracted, like children in an amusement park, to things that glisten but carry very little intrinsic value. It is the fact that we are living through this age of irresponsibility that makes the old lesson particularly worth teaching today.