National Defense Magazine describes the situation many of us find ourselves in. The US military is now collecting so much sensor data on the battlefield that it is literally being overwhelmed by it. Moreover, it finds itself constipated by legacy rules and regulations which prevent the information from being provided to combatants who need it. In an article entitled “Military ‘Swimming In Sensors and Drowning in Data’”, Stew Magnuson writes:
Synthesizing all these collection disciplines and disseminating them quickly is the challenge facing the military. If intelligence is the “coin of the realm,” as Clapper and other senior leaders said at the GEO-Int conference here, then the military may soon have more cash than it can spend.
“We’re going to find ourselves in the not too distant future swimming in sensors and drowning in data,” said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
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The problem started when a sharp increase in the quantity and quality of sensors began to outpace the analysis capabilities of the Air Force. One increased according to Moore’s Law while the other increased linearly, if at all. For example, new capabilities on the MQ-9 Reaper alone will increase the video feeds in a 24 hour period from that platform from 39 to more than 3,000. Who’s going to watch that feed? The Air Force has decided that whoever it is, it ain’t gonna be people. Automated systems are the planned upgrade path.
“Okay, I have got 27 targets to look at now. Does that mean I have to put 27 guys … on the shift that day?”
Industry now has to come up with the smart technology, machine-to-machine interfaces, that can help sort through all the data. There are 332,000 airmen in the Air Force, Heithold said. And they’re “really busy.” …
Whatever the solution is to sorting through all this data, it will not be more analysts.
“The answer isn’t throwing more manpower at it because in DoD, we don’t have it … It’s easier for me to get money than it is to get manpower,” he said. “We’re going to have to use technology, smart systems that cipher through the intelligence,” he added.
An increase in intelligence capability now translates to an increase in operational capability. Today it is not bullets or missiles that kill — they do in the sense that a triggerman pulls the trigger — but intelligence is the mastermind of the whole process. Destroying something on the ground has become the easy part of the US operational cycle. Knowing what to destroy, putting the cross hairs on something — that is the hardest part. The article cited the hunt for Zarqawi as an example. “Predator unmanned aerial vehicles flew 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a total of 600 hours to pinpoint Zarqawi’s location. Once that was done, it took only six minutes for two nearby F-16s to deliver the bombs that killed him.”
Operations at the same level as the information gathering may have real time capability. But for those who must work lower down in the chain getting intelligence can be hampered by the simple inability to internally deliver it. “’No matter what anybody says, it’s pathetic,’ Maj. Gen. John M. Custer, commanding general of Fort Huachuca, Ariz., and the Army intelligence center, said of the information sharing environment.”
Part of the problem is the changing economics of information. Only ten years ago sensor data was relatively scarce and held back to create power. It was, as the National Defense Magazine article observed, the “coin of the realm”. Today the information flows are literally a thousand times greater. Information is coming in by the truckload into a system designed to deal it out by the troy ounce.
The situation facing the Air Force has some points of similarity to the crisis which is now gripping the traditional media, but also key differences. The digital revolution significantly undermined the MSM’s monopoly on news gathering but it completely destroyed its hold over the distribution process. In the case of the USAF it still retains a monopoly over the sensor data acquisition but now finds that it is largely useless unless it can destroy its own self-created monopolies over distribution. It will have to do it somehow and whether it delegates to machine systems or to people it will still have to widen its distrubtion channel somehow. The only question is which mode to choose.
The revolution in the economics of information is forcing a revaluation of many tasks in the knowledge industry which would have been considered stable only a decade ago. The only constant is the law of supply and demand. Bottlenecks in the information system will largely determine which information processing tasks are the most valuable. They must in order for resources to flow into the bottleneck and eliminate them. Since the location of those bottlenecks is dynamically changing, these must be continuously found through a market process or self-reflection. The re-alignments in the news business are bound to reflect a market process, however it may be resisted by the likes of Dan Rather and his pleas for government support. But for the USAF, the price of information processing has to be determined either through internal markets or self-reflection. One thing is for sure: the economics of information in 2009 is no longer what it was in 1999. And it is unlikely to remain stable out to 2019.
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Prediction: All of this IT will eventually prove to be nothing more than an extremely exigent, ethereal, electronic version of the Marginot Line. It only appears useful because we have not yet begun to fight in the Middle East. We have been pretending to fight – playing video games using the techniques of video games.
The realities of symmetric warfare will not allow for such complicated systems to work as intended, and they will not be worth the price necessary to maintain them. Men at arms, force, and destruction – that’s the future of war. Soon we will have to adjust to seeing more casualties in a single day than we’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan in 8 years. The fog of war will greatly obscure the view from the drones.
Regarding the video, good actors convince you that they believe or at least understand what they are saying. These actresses can mouth corporate sounding phrases but it fails spectacularly because it is painfully obvious that they truly have no comprehension what a business is. This is inductive agitprop in which they decided to make a point to bash evil capitalism and dragged in the Scottish Play as a prop.
Regarding the armed forces drowning in more information than they can process, that is true if you accept all other conditions as fixed. If the US military continues to be Obamaized then it will be a force small enough that it can threaten nobody, with an enormous contingent of social workers and administrators at one end and a very small number of combatants at the other. The Intel intake and processing machinery is somewhere in the belly of the beast. Do not assume that the applying kinetic force to the target part is going to remain simple or readily available. Even now we no longer have the ability to respond to real threats in multiple locations. The United States needs to stop wasting money on things that do not contribute directly to National Security and we do need to triple the forces available to respond to threats. Increasing the number of teeth will mean an increase in the size of the tail and the belly but we should also reallocate support resources to meet our needs. That means hire more intel analysts, after buying more combat aircraft, ships and artillery tubes and hiring the troops to operate them. It also means that we cannot afford to waste resources on DACOWITS inspired feel good programs.
Matt Beck is correct. War is a matter of large numbers and enduring casualties until you achieve victory. It is not a process to manage as a theatrical variation on law enforcement. We must not seek unnecessary casualties but we need to communicate to the public what the costs have historically been and then why it is worth facing those costs again. Then we go to war not to achieve a graceful exit and a decent interval but to win. When you fight use the information but don’t let the tail wag the dog. The questions are,
1. Who is the enemy
2. Where is the enemy
3. Where are friendlies?
Then you point your troops at them and turn them loose.
Don’t try to get cute and nuanced about war.
“We’re going to find ourselves in the not too distant future swimming in sensors and drowning in data,”
The problem with processing, exploitation and dissemination is that it tends to be stove piped in operations. New mobile terminals are putting the capability in a laptop that can bring in multiband data from a variety of ISR sources. The reason that it is stove piped is because though much of the data is tactical, documenting the comings and goings in a organic battle, much of it is still classified above the level of a strategic corporal. Imagine for instance that the ISR being collected prior to Fallujah Two was being used to follow persons of interest and to ferret out their networks. When the crap hits the fan ‘all of your safe houses are belong to us’. On the other hand, data is time perishable and if the guy with boots on the ground can’t see where he is being engaged from it does him little good.
“I have got 27 targets to look at now.”
This is probably going to be of acute interest to one or several ground pounders who can down link sensor data to their own exploitation terminals and act accordingly; attack, defend, retreat, and here again the AF has put itself in an impossible role to fulfill all of the close air support operations then are needed. The ground pounder must eventually be able to take over the sensor ball and even coordinate orbits and flight paths. It is no wonder that the Army has done so well in this arena. And, with this kind of power comes threats too, it is necessary to lock down current technology with robust encryption. Even the goat herders are reading our mail with a little help from their friends.
“Predator unmanned aerial vehicles flew 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a total of 600 hours to pinpoint Zarqawi’s location. Once that was done, it took only six minutes for two nearby F-16s to deliver the bombs that killed him.”
And don’t forget that there were SF’s on the ground in observation too. I suspect that they probably gave the final confirmation. So in short the data must be made available to the end-users with the highest priority need to know. If you are in a small unit out on the end of a very tenuous supply chain and there are ijuns about, you are going to be very focused on what you are interested in.
OK, maybe you need a theater map with all of the non-covert ISR assets on screen in their real-time position and their real-time imagery. Click on its icon and you can subscribe to it data stream past and present. Get an OK through command and you can redirect its tasks. I guess the problem here is the data you have is value to you in direct proportion that the assets you deploy are of interest to the enemy. Tell no secrets.
“1. Who is the enemy
2. Where is the enemy
3. Where are friendlies?”
This is precisely what airborn ISR platforms provide. You do not necessarily need to deploy set peice forces when you know you enemies Achillies Heel.
“The Scottish Play”, LOL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h–HR7PWfp0
All this data does is make the middle part of the OODA loop a mashup. If you got too much data you cant observe much let alone decide. If you cant decide, you cant attack.
#4 Annoy Mouse
You are right in the modern day sense, but the idea that we should even have to ask such questions is indicative of why in these modern times victory is hard if not impossible to achieve.
Consider your questions in the context of WWII:
Who is the enemy? They have a name, Germans, Japanese, Taliban, whatever. If you stood behind them and supported them, then you too were the enemy.
Where is the enemy? In the context of WWII, when you passed over the border into say, Germany, you knew exactly where they were. Anyone within the borders of Germany was an enemy. There was no ambiguity about it whatsoever.
Where are friendlies?
With few exceptions worth caring about there simply weren’t any within enemy territories. Within the context of WWII, this would have been a meaningless question. You were either with us, and did actions that proved this, or you are just little lying weasels that would say anything to anybody if it would save your hide or give you an angle to make a buck.
When it comes to fighting wars the mindset of WWII is far more practical than the Hamlet type Politically Correct crap that predominates now. Never send a social worker or a community organizer to do a soldier’s job. That is a sure path to ruin.
Tcobb
I get your drift but when you have a strategic standoff between nuclear powers then wars are fought not amongst the cats but the mice. We either need to extricate ourselves from military operations in urban terrain and stay committed to the notion, (not likely with modern warfare) or get good at pinpointing your enemies who have a propensity of hiding amongst civilians. I think where we have gone wrong is that the intelligence data, drinking out of a fire hose, is not the problem, it is where you devote a significant operations effort to blowing up a wedding party that is a waste. This is not a problem of too much information. It is too much information at some high level operations center where the guy in front of the screen thinks he is more important than the guy on the ground with eyes on target. It is a problem of poor analysis that has put us in a situation that we have had to defer to the Afghani government to draw up their own rules of engagement to appease what little support they receive from their populace. Taking in all of the intel from a theater of operations and filtering it through a single point of processing and exploitation only slows down the dissemination of time sensitive data. Democratizing the intel and disseminating to lower echelons of end-users puts it where it’s needed and helps share the overwhelming task of processing and exploitation. This is being done to a certain extent already with Class I UAVs (hand-launched) and deployable robots. It may sound like a bunch of gee whiz video game stuff to us but the soldier doesn’t give a crap what is over the mountain. They want to know what is over the hill or in the compound in between and if some Haji is going to shoot them. This makes a case for more and smaller than less and bigger. In other words, a company can do more with a Shadow Class III UAV than they can do with a U2 or a satellite looking down a straw. Put the assets where they are needed and put the information in the hands of the war fighter.
Regards,
AM
Matt @ 1: I agree that the issue is not data but fighting. However, I think that is well within what the system is good for.
And of course we’re being waaay too picky about what we bomb.
Data is not information, we all are supposed to realize that.
The 21st Century’s continuation of the Fog of War.
Several components, some of them identified here, all working together to confound the successful execution of a masterful OODA loop, fantastically more complicated than that of the decision process faced by a Roman Legionnaire or Samurai approaching potential one-on-one combat.
Being drowned by the very inputs of information, hampered and helped by the volume and either lack of or over-restriction of filters; plus the actions of others, oftentimes finding oneself in virtually the same situation as sitting next to a drunk at a blackjack table who randomly, and to all but himself, invariably draws the dealer’s ‘bust’ card.
We are going through a revolution in military affairs in some ways similar to the introduction of the horse, or the transition from horses to machinery, or the shift in Naval paradigm of the battleship brought on by aircraft. In spite of the rapid advances of technology, in many ways those in the military are still at the very bottom of the learning curve in adapting to the tactics, techniques and procedures available and necessary to conduct information based warfare.
And it doesn’t help that the phrase ‘information based warfare’ is applied, or more often, misused to sound much more profound when discussing a variety of military topics.
The previous problem was one of gatekeeping – the green door phenomena, represented best by the exploitation of Enigma during WWII. It is the extreme of the ‘sources and methods’ classification argument – when all of the golden eggs are coming from a particular goose, extraordinary measures are called for to protect it. It is and remains a valid concern, with the most recent example being the ability of Al Qaeda to hamper information collection efforts based on the revelation of the ability to exploit their satellite based phone calls. There can be, however, a tendency to go overboard with such protective measures, causing unwarranted bottlenecks in the flow of valuable, perishable, and tactically actionable intelligence in a dynamic environment. That such filters are in place can also lead to mistrust between producers and consumers of intelligence, despite repeated demonstrations or assurances that things are not being ‘held back’, but simply don’t exist or are not available.
On the user end of the equation, the ‘drinking from a firehose’ phenomena is quite real, and can be as detrimental as having no information at all. This being the end result of improperly placing either analysis or decision making responsibilities, usually based on factors other than the what is optimal for mission accomplishment, often having to do with perceptions of process, rank or wrong-headed concepts of responsibility by the superfluous. It is a simple exercise to examine such impediments to information flow, from pre-computerized times, but often very difficult to apply them to modern circumstance, because of the tendency for people to be blinded by the razzle dazzle of new, shinier technologies from seeing simple, supposedly well understood concepts.
While we have developed the capability to get information from sensor to shooter in ‘near’ real time (a relative term of art that is argued about constantly, but which can have profound implications with modern systems), we often flail needlessly with the improvisation of unwanted interventions where inappropriate, and fail to do so even when the necessity appears to be almost painfully obvious. A couple of anecdotal examples of this flail/fail phenomena -
Being thrown out of a Patriot control van during an exercise exploring IFF procedures for making the impertinent observation that the two systems operators being overwhelmed with virtually unfiltered data might get some assistance from the adjacent tent full of soldiers playing cards instead of using the linked in systems to help them with the ‘sort them then shoot them’ task at hand – and having the point illustrated as I stepped out of the van, and an unchallenged (though not undetected) contractor flown AN-2 flew virtually overhead, with a guy waving out of the back window.
Watching, during Desert Storm, as two Iraqi F-1′s made a dash for Coalition warships in the Gulf, and in the process over/underflying at least two groups of inbound strikers, and past a couple of F-14 CAP aircraft, while an argument ensued over the validity of the data and who ‘owned’ the tracks, starting a second argument over who was responsible for shooting them – they were eventually dispatched by a Saudi F-15, but not after being well within range to employ their anti-shipping missiles. One reason I can conceive of that they did not was that they were likely also victims of information overload – by the time they were engaged, their radar warning gear was probably the single focus in those cockpits, due to the number of shooters that had them ‘locked up’, while being in such a ‘target rich’ environment themselves, they were unable to select one from the many.
The hurdle of selecting the one from the many, the wheat from the chaff, is extremely high, and as rightly mentioned, growing higher on an almost daily basis. Computing power has only recently advanced to the point of simply being able to include a lot of this data – knowing the location of every vehicle, much less every individual combatant (just the friendlies, never minding the enemies and neutrals), and converting that into a simplistic graphical display has until recently (and even may still be) a computational nightmare, causing systems to crash, time lags to increase, consuming both often limited bandwidth and sometimes quite overwhelmed human attention.
A tremendous amount of energy and thought is poured into these problems by some pretty bright folks, every day, struggling against not only the problem at hand, but institutional inertia in the form of unimaginative folks not unlike the 1930′s French General Officer Corps. My observation of the process in my last few years of active duty, and subsequent stint as a contractor left me with an overall ‘two steps forward, one step back, and a skitter to the side on occasion’ impression of progress.
The art will advance. But likely, there will be several examples of the guys standing around to hold the horses that were eliminated in the process.
Finally, a pet peeve. MAN, do I HATE the phrase ‘stovepipe’ – which in certain circles became almost ubiquitous at times discussing almost EVERYTHING at the Staff element I was assigned to worked on, regardless of relevance. It became a ‘code-phrase’ indicative that the PowerPoint Ranger using it didn’t have a frakkin clue about what he was talking/briefing about, on the level of step two of the Gnome business model.
Tcobb,
By “Where are the friendlies?” I was referring to the Friendly Fire problem. Bad enough when you do not know about the patrol that is out there but when dealing with coalition warfare there are a whole set of issues that HQ would rather not have to deal with. If we can tell the American Company Commander about the French unit with incompatible radios on the other side of a village, or the Italian hostage rescue team approaching a checkpoint, then much grief can be avoided.
If we had fought Vietnam by WW-II strategic targeting standards then we would have bombed the dikes in the Red River delta in 1965. Millions of lives would have been saved. A similar approach now demands careful management, it is not the same as engaging in genocidal bloody mindedness, but it would accept the loss of civilians in an enemy sanctuary or supply base as an acceptable cost of war.
During the strategic bombing campaign against Japan target lists were constantly reviewed and some places were rejected as not justifiable. or not worth the political, cultural or human cost, or not sufficiently vital to the enemies combat capacity.
People are invited to speculate on a target list for the current war. A justification for each place proposed would be appropriate.
The US Army is already doing computational analysis of data and pattern recognition studies continue apace. Air Force UAV software/pilot groups say that they already have programs for testing that would let a UAV go autonomous in air to air combat. A battalion command headquarters is quick to move and set up computer network center with big flat screens and connectors for laptops.
I was watching a video of a four legged pack machine successfully staying upright by it self on ice. It is getting very IT out there in so many ways. “Say Hello to my little friend [Bolo Mark V].”
Heinlein: “The biggest problem ain’t want you don’t know; it is what you do know that is wrong.”
And to that I might add that part of the problem is ignoring data that some people are Sure Is Important and results in you ignoring the really important stuff.
I once saw a USAF rocket make it all of 500 ft downrange largely because a group of Phd’s insisted on focusing our attention on something that proved to be pointless.
And people like to point out that FDR “must” have known about the coming attack on Pearl Harbor because of the intercepts and decryptions that showed it was coming – only they did not have the resources to decode all those messages until after WWII, and then as an academic exercise.
Experience shows that we need An Obsessed Man to look at the data, figure things out, and be entrusted with the power to do something about it. Bureaucracy assures us that it will all be Okay if we have professionals with the proper checklists who go home promptly at 1600 when the Time to Quit buzzer sounds.
It will not take more technology but instead an appreciation for simple competence.
Wind Rider
As far as the use of the term stove pipe, I was using it instead of “bottleneck” (a place or stage in a process at which progress is impeded), though I have heard it used in reference to certain companies that sell non-standard data link solutions to the government and maintain their proprietary encoding scheme in violation of US law. I find profiteering during wartime despicable but I guess we all have our concerns. As far as power point is concerned I have very mediocre skills that I try to put to best effect. I make no claims of having important information and comment here because I feel like it. Hope your transition to civilian life is a good one.
RWE @ 13: Experience shows that we need An Obsessed Man to look at the data, figure things out, and be entrusted with the power to do something about it.
Is it really considered “obsessed” these days to focus on results?
#11 Lifeofthemind
Its hokey I suppose–it comes from the Star Wars movies–but I consider it to be true, from the Yoda character–”There is no ‘try’–do it or do it not.”
When the soldiers on the ground are supposed to be social workers who can’t fire back at the poor oppressed little dark people who are shooting at them it is time to go home–and start shooting the sponsors of the poor oppressed little dark people.
“simple competence”
What a novel concept!
As far as “swimming” in too much data is concerned if that is your problem you should get out of the pool. My point in general is data is becoming more ubiquitous and there is little you can do about it. Hell even Hamas has fielded some crude but useful UAVs and the trend is that they are not going away. I argue that anyone with a camera in their cell phone, in effect, has their own ISR capability and while we argue who is the smartest man in the world who gets to use all of the data our enemies are making use of the technology by kluging together makeshift systems from parts they buy at RadioShack. I worked on Video Surveillance systems in the late 70’s that were installed into Casino’s and the like and they were extremely expensive back then. Now you can go to your local hardware store and by a system for a couple hundred dollars and if we can do it so can Johnny Jihad. In fact the advent of the cell phone and the internet have enabled them to do things that only major powers were capable of in the past and the trend once again is more technology distributed across more people. As romantic as it sounds area bombing trouble spots in a war zone the reality is more likely to be a bullet in the blue sky for our adversaries and the way to achieve that is by not centralizing the data to a small elite group of designated heroes to do the glamour work. Technology is wending its way to the non-elites in much the same way that the printed word did. My mother, who in her eighties now, grew up with switchboards and party lines and now cannot be without her email. The genie is out and there is no putting it back in so those who innovate faster will have the edge. Take IED’s for example. And it is heartening to know that Western universities have made a priority of matriculating nuclear physicists from Pakistan. That should help even things out. We are at a state where the only secrets being kept are from the US public. Everyone else in the world has a need to know but our worker bees can’t be disturbed from their purpose in life to make the honey so the elites can show us their mercy and protect us all by selling us all out to the highest bidder.
There was once a time that I worked on consumer products. Hell I even help to design a can opener. I enjoyed it too but thanks to the elite geniuses that decided that America was going to turn into a nice clean service economy ain’t nobody manufacturing can openers in America anymore. We have an economy that is based on over priced real estate, a new car every year, financial Ponzi schemes, healthcare, that just leaves pizza delivery and litigation. It is hard to eke out a living when half the population would rather the air we breath be polluted by China than pay a few dollars more to have it made in a health conscious US of A. It is no wonder that the only business that exports in this country any more is weapons and war. If that is what we are left to do then as far as I am concerned we should do more of it
Apologies for the collateral damage – it’s a red flag to a bull sorta thing. . .I’ve heard it used to mean the things you refer to, and quite often just used. . . well, because people didn’t know what they were talking about, and it is a handy indefinite phrase for something they really can’t describe because they don’t understand it, despite years of military service and advancement to (even) flag rank. (which is when it is REALLY annoying)
In the context of this discussion, your use is plausible – the first guy I heard use it (an O-6) actually meant that data was sent to a higher headquarters, then back down a specific chain, when information would have been more useful distributed laterally. He was one of the few I heard use the phrase in a really meaningful fashion, although I did disagree with him on extent – if all his dreams had come true, in my opinion the result would have been pilots being overloaded at the wrong times. And in such instances, it’s been my experience they’ll do one of three things 1) become so distracted they have inadvertent contact with the planet, or 2) miss the important point altogether, or 3) turn off ‘all that damned distracting noise’
Yet another story that I heard second hand. The guys that like to fly off boats decided it would be a wonderful idea to actually put a picture of what was supposed to get blowed up on one of the multifunction displays in their jets. Clamored for it. Demanded it. Screamed about ‘somebody is gonna die’ if they didn’t get the picture to look at and feel assured they weren’t trashing a kindergarten. Then they tested the idea at their place in SoCal – using most of the bandwidth available for one of the only datalinks available to them, btw, and presto, mere moments before arrival at their initial point, they had a ‘picture’ to look at and ‘see’ what they were dropping on. Only it didn’t quite go like they planned. Seems that the pictures were from different angles, and with different lighting than the ‘picture’ presented by their Mark 1 Mod 0 eyeballs, causing all kinds of confusion, with the end result being that they either couldn’t find the target, or would often abort weapons release because it didn’t ‘look’ right. Last I heard, the concept was ‘under further study’.
It illustrates a couple of things – first, the continued reliance on and insistence upon “eyes on” a target, which can be a good or bad thing, situationally; secondly, what can happen when TMI is injected at the wrong part of the process.
RE #13/#15 – the concept of ‘the obsessed man’ is something we have used with great success in the past – albeit the occasions where those ‘obsessed men’ were empowered to actually do anything have been limited – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If this ‘obsessed man’ had had such power, there probably would have been a really ugly friendly fire incident involving some Saudis during Desert Storm. Nevertheless, aside from such unpleasant incidents, it is what we have relied on in the past – but is a luxury we won’t have going into the future – it is extremely manpower intensive, for one, and the talent to do it well is a rare thing, i.e. have hyper-sensitive situational awareness to the point of anticipation of outcome, correctly. As such, it’s almost an unquantifiable, and unquantifiables don’t make for confidence in those in the chain of command above it, or the end user with his butt on the line to depend on it.
Er – claims the comment @8:04 was RESPONDING to Annoy mouse – see what I mean about placing all your faith in the obsessed man model!
“become so distracted they have inadvertent contact with the planet”
Good one.
And when the screens go dark, or are flooded with misleading information? Because no technically competent enemy will just let our systems work unhindered.
I’m not so sure about what some early commenters said about massed numbers, for example, medieval armies were very small in numbers because the key technologies of armored horsemen were so expensive. But I quite agree that in the end war will be brutal and the idea of pushbutton, ‘don’t muss your hair’ warfare leads only to disappointment and if not corrected, defeat.
It’s hard to think of a war of any duration that didn’t wind up more brutal than anyone conceived of when it started. Even the Franco-Prussian War, a relatively quick one, wound up in the Paris Commune. Seems like it’s almost a rule, if one side doesn’t win in the initial clash, big trouble ahead.
And I doubt we are ready, psychologically or in terms of resources and esp. doctrine.
#19 Annoy Mouse states: In the context of this discussion, your use is plausible – the first guy I heard use it (an O-6) actually meant that data was sent to a higher headquarters, then back down a specific chain, when information would have been more useful distributed laterally.
That is definitely a form of stove-piping. Another situation that occurs often times is when narrow functional groups in an organization do not share a lot of info or data. I ran into this at a shop I was in and often times we or others would have to rollback changes because those changes adversely impacted other systems — the lack of communication across functional groups led to this. A bottleneck is when an obstacle impedes data flow — whether in a stovepipe or otherwise, of course one may recognize a stream in an already narrow channel has a higher risk of developing bottlenecks.
We have both of those going on here. The first is commanders up the chain have to clear & dole out the information. So up the pipe it goes to the appropriate level of command that command then dumps back down another pipe. Of course, this means those in different pipelines do not get the information that could be very very useful. Plus add to this the various branches jealously holding onto their goods.
Most shops I have been in handle their data pretty well. Managers may sit down with their reports and myself to discuss what data they need to do their jobs. Then we go to work developing a system to present the data to those who need it and in a timely fashion.
There are a number of difficulties facing warriors and getting the information to them, and an example or two has been pointed out. Divide and conqueror works with data as well as with projects and fighting.
Still, upper level management needs to be in on the data game. However, in a different fashion. The notion of data warehousing & mining are the names of the game here.
The worker bees use the data to accomplish their day to day goals while the queen bees take that very same data and slice & dice it up to determine strategic direction.
Idiot savants are often able to dazzle us with feats of memory and recall. However, that very same power of memory & recall is what makes them dysfunctional. Same with too much data.
“Do not assume that the applying kinetic force to the target etc.”…I hold a Certificate Of Copyright from the Library Of Congress for video footage on which I perform my kinetic power…do not assume that it is not real! It is revealed within: A Kinetic Person’s Power(Creative Non-Fiction), Sub Title: Voice Command Ability, By: Kenneth Adrian Ellis. Goto: http://www.YouTube.com, then search: Kenneth A. Ellis to view my professional Author Display Video(1min:58sec.), then goto: http://www.prlog.org/10285981 to read my on-line Press Release! Thank You and God Bless for allowing this posting!
Nothing new here. The first battle Chester Nimitz had to win was to stop all the intelligence from going to Washington and then
being (partially) passed back to those in the field in due order (too late).
I had the same problem in I Corps. A really hot KB by me or my colleagues took about three weeks to reach the firebase(s)affected. A more routine report took 6 weeks to 2 months.
I took to doing handwritten summaries (noting that the info had not been “peer reviewed”) and using the Black Cats and other assets to ferry same to where they needed to go.
I have noted that in Afghanistan the towelheads have been able to mass up to 250 fighters for an attack with nobody being the wiser. Does this mean that none of our state-of-the-art survelliance systems saw them? Rather improbable and only theoretically possible. Far more likely that the pertinent info was sent to Washington/Langley
and then ignored as it did not fit in with their latest “big-game” quest.
Send the data directly to the Corporals and Sergeants manning the outposts and then watch what happens.
Intelligence failures seldom come from a lack of information or a lack of refinement.
Lack of dissemination is much more common.
Of COURSE no human being can analyze all the data that comes in from everywhere. But there are lots of people who can analyze the data about their locale. Let them in on the secret, would you?
PS: The automation described strikes me as a sure-fire way of locking up the findings so that NOBODY gets any info anywhere. Typical bureaucratic solution. Can you say “Completely Inept and Assinine’?
Maybe we can outsource our analysis. From the Wall Street Journal:
“Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html
This flaw has been known since the campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s “[b]ut the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn’t know how to exploit it…”
Information overload was observed during the first years at the National Training Center. Units which were micro managed in garrison continued that behavior in the field. When the NTC OPFOR situation became very active, the ‘command authority’ became overwhelmed with making decisions. The subordinate units conditioned to await the mother-may-I orders sat and either watched the OPFOR operate unmolested in front of them or felt the full fury of of their attention. Commanders want to command. Instead of seeking a team of talented subordinates that are coached in performance and allowed to operate with freedom, they all too often seek [technological] means to pull the marionette strings. Knowledge is power and commanders seek to retain that power rather than trust their subordinates. All one has to do is look at the restrictive ROEs to see that played out. It’s just another symptom of the same pathology.
The solution would be to provide the information at the appropriate level allowing that level to operate on it. If the echelon does not have assets directly effected by information, it should have no hold on that information. While upper levels could be provided courtesy copies to meld with other data, it leaves the control of the effect of the information at the lowest level of execution.
Insurgents in Iraq Hack U.S. Drones
Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.
Wind Rider #20:
In the 1940′s we had no problem with finding adequate numbers of obsessed men – with a largely conscript military, and a natioanl population 1/3 of what it is today.
The manpower requirements in terms of numbers are trivial. But today’s aspiring obsessed men are loaded down with trivalities.
Any bureucacy that actually occasionally gets things done – like the USAF – follows the “ask a busy man” principle. Commanders are loaded down with all sorts of useless tasks – from organizing the base picnic to heeding the security wonks – and are aware that such things can do them no real good but no little harm, either. So they take the guy they trust and give it to him – along with the really important things.
Taken to itslogical conclusion, the simply competent, Obsessed-Man-wanna-be does nothing but answer the phone all day and explain why he has gotten to none of the 500 things he has been assigned.
As you allude, the military is so focused on the specific MOS or AFSC – career field designations and organizational titles – that they will happily dump all the work on one guy while those that are designated specialists in putting out flaming kangaroos at night on alternate wendesdays with months that do not have an R in them twiddle their thumbs.
We are not undermanned but overhassled.
Those who think information overload is bad now have no idea what it will be like when Middle Eastern populations are “chipped” en masse.
This is rather amusing. Commanders have until very recent times struggled with intelligence and divining the location and movements of the enemy. What would a Bonaparte or Lee have given to know exactly where his enemy was and the direction he was moving?
Today we can watch the enemy eating meals, sleeping, lighting cigarettes and using the latrine in real time and we find ourselves slowly seizing up in uncertainty because there is too much information.
Just goes to show that at heart the human condition is what it is because no matter how much we have there is always a counter balance of what we have not. And these things are almost always impossible to anticipate. No doubt the problem will be worked out. One wonders what will then arise to muddy the waters and put us back where we were to begin with (though the outward trappings will probably be prettier).
The simple irony is that data that is too sensitive or too raw to give to our own people is being freely read by the enemy using Dos 1.1 technology. Supposedly no critical information was lost to the enemy save the means and methods of data collection and the resolution of their sensor systems. It isn’t too far off and they’ll figure out the secret sauce for the witches brew as well.
on the plus side, now our guys in the field know they can buy a $26 program and tap into the live feed from the drones….
Buck it up guys. The singularity is not here yet, but the brain of the soldier can assimilate megabytes of data! Technology can present the data well (HUD) and allow the pilot to fly the F16 (mandatory computer assisted). The BIGGER problem is the NCA back up line changing the ROE as he rolls in on the target. Much worse with Obama and crowd in place. At least GW flew a century series jet in the Texas Air National Guard out of Ellington. And the “stolen” downloads from the drones – How do you spell disinformatia? chuckle.