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Network-Centric Warfare
Early in 2003, US Army Lieutenant General Joseph Kellogg, director
of command, control, communications and computer systems (C4) for the Joint
Staff, stated that the US concept of network-centric warfare (NCW) is
composed of three equal parts, technology, organization, and culture.
Technology is the enabler in the equation and must be interoperable. Kellogg
was less clear in explaining that culture involves taking risks while insuring that
failures do not occur and that organizations must center on creating an
environment for speed with only a single overall commander. 169
In 1998, Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski, USN (Ret.), the director
for space, information warfare, command and control (N-6), and John Garstka,
the scientific and technical advisor for the directorate for C4 systems on the
Joint Staff (J-6), wrote an article focused on business adaptations to the
Information Age: 170
• The power of network-centric computing comes from informationintensive
interactions between large numbers of heterogeneous
computational nodes in the network.
• Competitive advantages come from the co-evolvement of
organizations and processes to exploit information technology,
employing network-centric operational architectures consisting of a
high-powered information grid, a sensor grid, and a transaction
grid.
• The key to market dominance lies in making strategic choices
appropriate to changing ecosystems.
The authors then noted that network-centric operations offered the
same dynamics to the military. Strategically, that meant understanding all the
elements of battlespace and battle time; operationally, it meant mirroring
business ecosystem linkages among units and the operating environment;
tactically, it meant speed of operations; and structurally, it meant that networkcentric
warfare required sensor and transaction grids and an information grid
supported by command and control processes needing automation for speed.
NCW reportedly enabled a shift from attrition warfare. Speed enabled a force to
have more battlespace awareness, mass effects instead of forces, and foreclose
enemy courses of action. It also offset disadvantages in numbers, technology,
or position and was capable of locking out alternative enemy strategies and
locking in success.
169 Dan Caterinicchia, Federal Computer Week, 23 January 2003.
170 Arthur K. Cebrowski and John J. Garstka, “Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and
Future,” US Naval Institute Proceedings, 124, No. 1 (January 1998), pp 28-35.
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