Battle-Wise: Seeking Time-Information Superiority in Networked Warfare - Defeating Adversaries, Cognitive Demands, Integrating Intuition and Reasoning, Battle Wisdom from Firepower to Brainpower

Professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction, this unique study an inquiry into the possibility of improving the operational thinking and decisionmaking of U.S. military individuals, teams, and forces who fight for their nation. The inspiration for this work lies in both the belief that information networking presents a unique chance to improve cognitive effectiveness in battle and the worry that U.S. security interests could suffer if this chance is missed. The United States is presently unrivalled in military power and assured of remaining so for the foreseeable future, thanks to its resources and the transformation of its forces based on networking principles. However, as adversaries of various sorts and sizes also adopt those same principles and exploit increasingly available and easily usable information technology (IT), U.S. operational advantages and strategic equities could be eroded. The unstoppable spread of information networking and know-how gives rise to the need for a new edge—one that utilizes but transcends networks—by developing people, teams, and decisionmaking methods that convert information into better choices and outcomes. We call this new edge battle-wisdom.

The mind is often inadequate to solve complex problems, such as those that will be commonplace in the unpredictable military contingencies of a fluid future. But the mind is gifted beyond any machine—indeed, beyond its own comprehension—and it now has high-performance, distributed information systems to assist it. Far from being less important, reasoning and intuition are more important, and they hold new potential. In any case, computers and networks cannot be held responsible, but people can.

The role of the mind in networked warfare is still unknown. This book is meant to raise ideas, issues, and possibilities, as well as—at the risk of seeming presumptuous—a potential framework. Some new concepts and terms are introduced, and some established ones are heavily used. To assist both our explanation and the reader's understanding, we provide a short glossary of key terms at the back of the volume.

This book is written for the policymaker, the strategist, the warfighter, and the layman. At the same time, we hope that the research community will benefit from our attempt to put battlefield cognition into strategic and policy contexts. Clearly, more empirical and theoretical research is needed, which is why we conclude the book with a set of questions for further analysis. Where we have suggestions to make, they are only indicative and, we hope, provocative. As this field continues to evolve, we can be sure of only one thing—ours is far from the last word.