March 25, 1999
 

"A Commander’s View of Information Warfare"

I’d like to say to all assembled, if you could be sitting in my seat, you couldn’t be prouder of the great demonstration that was put on last night by America’s airmen. Not only America’s airmen, but the airmen arrayed from a variety of NATO countries that came together with a singular knowledge of tactics. The words all meant the same to each airman. Although the accents were different among the allies, the performance was of the same high standard.

It looks like our F-15 guys bagged two MiG 29s. It looks like our Dutch friends bagged another MiG 29, and the quality of our engagement of SAMs and our engagement of the targets was equally commendable throughout the night. All of our most special assets worked in a way that the members of industry would be very proud of.

Before I start on a discussion of Information Warfare, I’d like to apologize up front. I have not had much sleep over the last 48 hours, and I am probably not as sharp or prepared as I would like to be. I am going to proceed because I hold this subject near and dear, and I am prepared to discuss it at a level that would be helpful to the conference.

On the subject of Information Warfare, I have several concerns. There are many forces in motion throughout our Air Force that are quite troublesome. I worry first about definition. We see several forces at work to try to parse definitions that we capture under this umbrella that has already given us definitions such as offensive and defensive warfare, psychological warfare, deception and electronic warfare. All are captured under this definition of IW. Words mean profoundly different things to different people when you talk about IW.

If you are in NATO and you talk about Information Warfare, what is mostly received is the word propaganda. When you talk to other large elements of the Information Warfare community, what you hear is computer warfare. It is the world of modems and keyboards. Still another community includes that broad definition of electronic warfare and mixes up the definitions of electronic bashing and electronic manipulation. We get overwhelmed in most cases by a discussion of Information Warfare at the strategic level. Even in the exercises that we see that have to do with Information Warfare, the Services are largely excluded, which leaves out the basic warfighting principle of joint warfare.

When we hear talk of Information Warfare, the mind conjures up notions of taking some country’s piece of sacred infrastructure in a way that is hardly relevant to the commander at the operational and tactical level.

I want to dwell today on Information Warfare at the operational and tactical level, which is what I am most concerned with.

I also see a tendency to try and separate the offense and the defense, where the offense is being further split into computer or network warfare. And these subdivisions go on endlessly until we have so destratified the whole notion of Information Warfare that nothing may be useful to us.

I need to tell you what is important to me, the commander. I need to be able to think in terms of effects. I think I share this with commanders of all Services. We need to be able to think in terms of target effects. I picture myself around that same targeting table where you have the fighter pilot, the bomber pilot, the special operations people and the information warriors. As you go down the target list, each one takes a turn raising his or her hand saying, “I can take that target.” When you get to the info warrior, the info warrior says, “I can take the target, but first I have to go back to Washington and get a finding.” Then you go off, and you get that resolved, and the info warrior comes back to you and says, “Sir, I can take that target, but I’ve just been told that I can’t, for security reasons. And not only that, but the decision that you could have made to bomb it 10 minutes ago is no longer yours because I’ve been told you can’t bomb that target either.” This is an example of policy getting in the way of warfighting principles, what I define as a lack of attention to Information Warfare at the tactical and operational level.

We also have a great tendency to reinvent. As this new thing of Information Warfare comes along, our tendency is to try to put it in a whole new context and reinvent it in an environment of its own before it has had a chance to prove itself. There is a temporal dimension to this that we need to let take hold. I would ask that as we think this through that we remember several things.

As we have learned in the application of air power throughout history, we need to make sure that we have the right order of the means and the ends. We proved air power in many areas before we made ourselves a separate Air Force in 1948. Air power proved itself over time to be a significant enough tool that the mastery of that environment deserved its own separate consideration.

For right now, I would submit that we are not there with Information Warfare. As a commander, what I need out of Information Warfare is the ability it has, not only to take on targets, but also, in the sense of deception, its ability to create for me in the enemy’s mind a completely different reality than the one that exists. Those are capabilities that are within our grasp technologywise. We would want an intercept operator sitting on the ground somewhere to look at his scope and see something complete different than what is really there and act on it in a way that is completely irrational to the real situation. We would want the normal lines of communication, such as radio relays, to be so distorted that an adversary commander couldn’t take advantage of them in a way that is doctrinally sound. That is the sort of IW capability that a commander needs at the operational and tactical level.

This goes along with a need to consider the operational and the tactical level of IW as is just as important as the strategic. Because, in the day-to-day consideration of effect and contingency planning and warfighting, this is where we apply Information Warfare to a greater extent than probably at the strategic level. This doesn’t mean that we decrease our consideration of strategic level IW. Not at all. The need to protect our very important infrastructure -- our national infrastructure -- and to be able to take offense and defense at the national level is vital. I think the direction that will put these capabilities in space command is exactly the right direction for that level. I would still argue that there is a case for development at the operational and tactical levels of capabilities, even down to the major commands. Certainly we have a place in the requirements business.

Finally, let me touch just a minute on concepts of operations and doctrine. When I say there is a tempo dimension to this, and it has to be proved, I think that we as airmen are uniquely placed to be able to consider Information Warfare in the familiar context of aerospace offensive and defensive counter-aerospace or aerospace superiority. We understand sort of genetically as airmen the difference between offensive and defensive counter air. The basic principle on the offense involves a certain set of tools that make it possible to actually project yourself with air superiority into enemy territory.

On the defensive side, you are able to defend fixed sites or valuable places in a defensive context. This is a directly transferable notion that does not require a great deal of reinventing to apply in the IO world. I also think that this applies directly and powerfully to the work we are trying to do to define air and space integration. The architectures and the lash-ups it takes to provide ourselves with this battle space internet and interconnectivity give us things such as the command and control and the information flow that we need to do our jobs.

One more issue is the difference between the offense and the defense. There is a very fine line between the offense and the defense, and any step that we take to separate or segregate the two will be a great disservice to us. I think they are side by side and in many cases indistinguishable. As an air operations center commander, I would relish getting to the day where we have the capability to retaliate immediately and proportionately to anyone trying to intrude or trying to invade a network or disrupt communications up, down or sideways. We would want to greet such an intrusion with response in direct proportion to the potential damage. I realize this gets into legal territory that we still have to traverse. But we need to get on with this sort of a legal argument to establish a requirement and not let it languish any longer, in my view.

Finally, for the defensive piece, we need to have the right tools. Just as the tools for the strategic air defense of the continental United States were profoundly different from the tools that we had for the counter-air mission, so, too, are the tools different in the defensive Information Warfare world.

In the case of the air operations center, those tools need to be tools that assure my connectivity up, down and sideways. They need to ensure the connectivity of the data link on which I depend so greatly, and they do it in a way that does not so squeeze down the pipe, rendering all of my communications too slow to be useful. Other techniques to address these interruptions have to be worked. Also, with real time alerting goes real-time counter measures.

Our interface with the EW world has to be considered. The EW world right now is captured under the broad heading of Information Warfare, and it may or may not belong there. I am not sure in my own mind. But I do think that we need to be able to draw a distinction between electron bashing and electron manipulation. I know there is a very fine distinction between the two, but I do believe that it’s a distinction that has to be made, and I am not sure they belong under the same heading.

Finally, as our Air Force considers its steps into the information world, I believe firmly that from a doctrinal point of view, we are very well positioned to put these tools and practices to work. I think we are also well positioned with equipment and the weapons that need to be developed. I think we have to work on the concept that captures all of these in the way we understand our current context of the targeting cycle, our doctrine and combat and mission effects. I think personally that a rush to segregate these into a separate entity -- a separate command -- and create a separate empire is counterproductive until this set of tools and this capability has had a chance to earn its way into that particular status.

As a commander who is very much concerned with these capabilities even as we sit here, I appreciate very much the chance to share my views and to perhaps work on this audience’s understanding of the commander’s perspective. I thank you very much for this opportunity.

General Shaud: The first question has to do with a comment made about your command here yesterday where a speaker said USAFE has a model information ops cell. Have you figured out something that has escaped others, or is that a reflection on what you are doing right now?

General Jumper: As you recall, under the direction of General Fogleman, we stood up the Information Warfare squadron at Shaw Air Force Base. So, if there is anything different about USAFE it is that I came armed with some fairly rich experience from the establishment of this squadron and the thinking of the young people at the tactical and operational who that set this up. As we set up the cell in USAFE we started it off as a flight. Some day we hope we can earn our way into a squadron rating. We also persist on pushing the system. We make demands on the systems -- for example, the requirements system, the legal system, to get us the capabilities we need, and we try to force, as well as we can, explanations when we’re told we can’t do something as we push on this process. If there is a difference, perhaps that is it.

General Shaud: Theater commanders usually have wish lists. What other info ops capabilities would you like to have had in the last few days?

General Jumper: That is pretty easy to answer. I’d like to have all of those things I’ve been told about -- things that really aren’t available for months or even years -- when you actually ask for them.

General Shaud: Let me have a follow-on to that. Address if there is sufficient intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to support you. Are there ISR shortfalls as you are addressing your current situation?

General Jumper: We do have good ISR. I am not sure you ever have enough. What we are working on very hard is the lash-ups and the link-ups. What we are trying to do is get to this notion -- and I talk about it when I talk about the air and space integration piece -- this notion of find, fix, target, track, engage and assess. It’s my personal opinion, that this is the bumper sticker that ought to carry and propel our aerospace force into the next century. In USAFE, we are trying to create these architectures and link-ups that give as quickly as possible real time lash-ups between what is happening on the ground and in the air. We want to put that information into the hands of the person who can do something about it with the understanding that when we do that, that information has to be reliable and of targeting quality. For instance, if we put something into the cockpit of the F-15E, I don’t want it to just be an update of the picture that the pilot left the squadron with. I want it to come into the cockpit as a targeting quality entity from which the pilot can steer and take action.

General Shaud: This is a doctrinal question. Who in the leadership reconciles Information Operations differences or tension between those who control information technology and those who control operations, the DO? Who gets to be the arbiter?

General Jumper: This is not unlike tensions we’ve experienced in the past with the airplane. In my estimation, we have to put it right on the wall in loud and clear letters that all warriors are created equal. I said this in Orlando, and I believe it to be true. It is space warriors, air warriors and info warriors. We should not have info warriors that lack understanding of air operations and space operations and the counters to those are also all true. We as an aerospace force have to be equally adept at explaining those modes of warfare that give us an effect and a capability. The effect that I need to achieve in interdiction, in counter air or at sea is a product of all of those elements that have to come together with warriors that understand their application in equal proportions. That is the warrior we are looking for, and when we have those tensions, we should shoot those guys and go out and find the ones who do understand.

Return to the Defense Colloquium on Information Operations Page