Bits, Bangs, or Bucks? The Coming Information Crisis
Alan R. Washburn · 2001
There is a crisis approaching for military OR, centered on the role of information on the battlefield. It is clear to military professionals that information is becoming increasingly important, but unfortunately the OR profession's ability to measure its contribution is still primitive. We are not good at deciding whether information is cost/effective or whether information is more important than firepower, and yet precisely these questions will be asked more and more frequently as budgets shrink. Scott (1998) quotes General Howell M. Estes III, the commander of USSPACECOM, as saying: Hard choices need to be made between investments in information infrastructure [and] the combat systems themselves. This is an extreme dilemma, because combat systems, without timely, relevant information, are useless. On the other hand, you can’t take out an enemy tank with just information. We need to strike a balance between ‘shooters ’ and ‘information systems ’ if we’re going to be successful in the future. But we aren’t even sure how information should be measured — is it measured in bits, or what? The word “crisis ” is not too strong for our approaching predicament. Our leaders have recognized and articulated the importance of information. JV2010 defines Information Superiority to be “The capability to collect, process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying an adversary’s ability to do the same”, and subordinates other dimensions of warfare. The Revolution in Military Affairs is mainly a revolution about information. It has been stated by many authors that the Allied advantage in Desert Storm was most strikingly an information advantage, rather than one of firepower. It is not as if we haven’t been warned about the growing importance of information, and yet we do not seem to have the evaluation tools that we need. Why is the problem so difficult? Are the right tools already out there just waiting to be applied? Can they be developed? Let’s review the situation, bearing in mind the JV2010 emphasis on the value of being able to “collect, process, and disseminate…”