The Art of Information War

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preface

Introduction (Heiho)

I. Estimates

II. Waging Information War

III. Offensive Strategy

IV. Dispositions

V. Energy

VI. Weaknesses and Strengths

VII. Manoeuvre (The Reconnaissance Strike and Defense Complex)

VIII. The Nine Variables (In The Catastrophe Equations)

IX. Marches

X. Terrain (Dimensions)

XI. The Nine Varieties of Ground (Dimensions)

XII. Attack by Fire (Radio-electronnya Bor’ba)

XIII. Employment of Secret Agents

APPENDIX I. The Author

APPENDIX II. The Commentators.

Biographical Sketch-Professor John I. Alger

Biographical Sketch-Mr. William B. Cunningham

Biographical Sketch-Professor Frederick W. Giessler

Biographical Sketch-Professor Daniel T. Kuehl

Biographical Sketch-Major Carl E. Rodgers, USMC

APPENDIX III. About the text.

APPENDIX IV. The School of Information Warfare and Strategy

Bibliography

Glossary

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the commentators for their excellent advice and their endless patience as I developed this book. I would like to thank Ruth Wallach for her very meticulous translation of the first edition of the book into digital media that allowed the subsequent update and redistribution of the second edition to be possible. I would also like to thank David B. Nelson. His tireless searches through mountains of material provided valuable citations and sources. Thanks also to Jim Criner, who ambushed me in one of the first classes that I gave on Information-Based Warfare. Our academic debate on the merits of Sun Tzu versus Clausewitz fueled my interest to write this book. So Jim, the ball is in your court. I would expect a reply to be about the same length of Clausewitz’s tome, On War.

Author’s Note 2013—In 1995 we wrote this book to enable our forces to understand a new form of warfare. We ran a very limited number in print with a very closed and exclusive distribution of those prints, in order to communicate and share first principles as we began to develop our capabilities. There is a school of thought among scholars of warfare that there are eternal principles of war that endure through time, technology, concepts of operation, and organizational change. This author is of that school of thought. Therefore, there are few changes you will find in this new edition in 2013. This is a book of first principles. It is for the reader to judge if these principles of war still ring true.

For those of us with the first copy of the book, I salute you for your quiet dedication to the service of your country. We are well prepared now, thanks to you, for the wars we are fighting now in this domain.

For our enemies, read this and learn. It will help you improve, definitely, but it should give you pause. We were light years ahead of where you are now, in 1995, and we’ve had all this time to improve. Be warned.

Foreword

". . . for art and science are a single gift, called science inasmuch as art refashions the mind, and called art inasmuch by science the world is refashioned."

Santayana, Dialogues in Limbo

The title of this book and the writing style of Sun Tzu were chosen for very good reasons that the reader should consider before beginning.

First, the title The Art of Information Warfare serves warning that the topic is more art than precise science, and not subject to easily codified rules. Art, regardless of medium, however, is subject to principles that can be understood and mastered. Like art, the uninitiated may know what I like, when I see it or hear it. A course or two in art appreciation provides most consumers with background for both appreciating and enjoying the projects on a more discerning basis. Artistry requires mastery of the basic principles, the relationships between principles, and the techniques of execution. In addition, the artist must be able to visualize and interpret the subject into the chosen medium.

Second, this book is written in the style of Sun Tzu, a series of short statements or aphorisms. Like Sun Tzu, the value lies in understanding the whole, particularly the relationship between the parts. The typical Western approach is taxonomic, dividing a subject area into discrete subsections neatly labeled with unambiguous definitions. This implies a requirement to master, or at least understand thoroughly, a subsection before proceeding, and is exactly the wrong approach to take with this book. Also like Sun Tzu, the statements in this treatise are based on a principle whose presence or effect may not be obvious. The relationship between principles is derived from the whole, not from exhaustive knowledge of the components individually. The reader is therefore enjoined not to get bogged down over a single point. The book is short. Plan to read it the first time in one sitting with the intent of seeing the whole picture. A second reading should pull things together and indicate parts for further contemplation. At this point, the reader has become informed, but not necessarily appreciative. That requires a third reading and study of the individual principles. Plan on it.

This book introduces basic principles. The reader must decide whether to become an informed member of the audience or continue on to become an artist. In any case, the reader will understand that Information Warfare is not about being cute or trendy. It is about surviving and winning in the Information Age.

Mr. William B. Cunningham

Headquarters

US Army Training and Doctrine Command

C4I Directorate, ODCSCD

Preface

The Cybernetic Framework for Information Warfare.

Exemplary is a ship-of-state. A steersman decides what to do to the tiller, sails, and oars in order for Exemplary to reach port at the appointed time. He considers the state of critical variables, any one of which could cause Exemplary to flounder and thus prevent it from accomplishing the objective. The variables include water depth (in particular and not on average), sea state, weather, crew and crew support, ship condition, speed, and direction.

The steersman has a sensor for each one of these critical variables because he knows that if any one or group of variables nears a certain upper or lower limit in value at one time or another, Exemplary is in danger of floundering (and thus failing to meet the objective). He may or may not be able to monitor all the sensors himself. If not, he will need a monitor to keep an eye on the current state and the time series or trends depicted by each sensor and critical groupings of sensors relating jointly critical variables.

The monitor must have time to compare the empirical value of every variable state with the values that the steersman requires if Exemplary is to survive and arrive at port on time. If the monitor does not have the time or computational capability, there will have to be a comparator who sets off alarms when the trends in one or more critical variables are moving toward a Non Survival state. This comparator communicates his findings, the actions that the steersman has taken, to the ship’s log (history or memory) and to the Executive Officer who serves as the controller.

The controller considers the comparison of what is, what should be, the actions of the steersman, and what has happened in history under similar circumstances when steersmen took certain actions. The controller selects likely courses of actions from similar circumstances in history. The controller announces the courses of actions so that the steersman may choose. The steersman decides what course of action to take from the proffered list to change the trends in the questionable critical variables. So the steersman changes the tiller, orders the set of the sails and directs the oarsmen to take certain actions. While all of this has been going on, new disturbances have arrived on the scene to influence the state of several of the critical variables: wind, rain, sun, their impact on the speed and direction of Exemplary, the actions of the crew, and the steersman. Exemplary’s physical survival is always in question. Barometric pressure change, floating objects, and undersea volcanoes could exacerbate the adverse trends in the state of a number of critical variables. The steersman continues this high pressure, real-time systems operation to ensure survival of Exemplary while attaining the port at the designated time, and thus accomplishing the objective.

Now what if the arrival of Exemplary at the objective port and time is counter to your own objectives? It is important that you prevent Exemplary from arriving at the port at the designated time.

To prevent its arrival, you could try to destroy Exemplary by attacking it with other ships or the Destructive Wizardry Weapons in your arsenal. This may be very costly politically, militarily, economically, and/or socially. It may also be very difficult and have a high measure of risk in that the failure of the attack could prevent you from achieving your own objectives.

The appropriate strategy to attack the steersman is in the Information Arena-not in the physical or material. Seize and control any or all the steersman’s critical variables. Waging Information Warfare will allow you to ensure that Exemplary does not arrive at its originally appointed port and time, and you may do so without the use of destructive fires or friendly casualties.

Attack the Information System of Exemplary. Target the sensors, monitor, comparator, data base of historic performance, controller, the regulating decision maker, and his direction of resources. Exemplary may not reach the objective for a number of reasons: errors of time, geographical location error, erroneous directives, or the development of a situation that causes a new objective for Exemplary. Use Information as a weapon if possible. If not, use Information to allow you to perform new or improved actions with physically destructive weapons against these targets.

Information Warfare gives you a greater selection of courses of action to meet your objectives. You can attack the steersman’s decision system-the nodes, functions, transmission channels and processors. The choices include an attack on the input, process, output, or feedback in each element of the ship’s system. If feasible, focus on one vulnerable and indispensable part of his system although it is probable that a variety of elements must be attacked simultaneously or in purposeful sequence.

Information Warfare is applicable to the ship-of-state, Exemplary, in the broadest context. This type of warfare straddles the continuum of political, strategic, operational and tactical levels of war. It is waged continuously at all levels, through peacetime, crisis, escalation, conflict, war, war termination, and restoration. It is the art of survival.

Dr. Fred Giessler

Professor of Information-Based Warfare,

School of Information Warfare and strategy,

Information Resources Management College,

National Defense University

Introduction (Heiho)

Shinmen Musashi No Kami Fujiwara No Genshin, or as he is commonly known, Miyamoto Musashi, was born in 1584 and died May 19, 1645. According to his own writing, he came to understand strategy when he was fifty or fifty-one in 1634. In 1643, he retired to a cave where he wrote Go Rin No Sho, A Book of Five Rings. Go Rin No Sho is a book of strategy. Strategy in Japanese is Heiho, the soldier form.

In Musashi’s time, only the Samurai who used the long sword were considered strategists. Despite the mastery of gunpowder technology by the Japanese decades before Musashi’s time, guns disappeared from their wars. They were driven from the field by an all powerful aristocratic class threatened by the cultural pressures of this egalitarian technology.

The impact of Information Technologies has a very pronounced parallel with the Heiho of Musashi and his period of war. In our military-industrial culture, those who sail the aircraft carriers, fly the jets, and drive the tanks are the aristocracy of war. The warriors, platforms and the companies that build them are the culmination of a revolution in military affairs that occurred over nine decades ago. High intensity conflict is the Heiho of today.

The U.S. military continues to search and prepare