Transforming Military Force: The Legacy of Arthur Cebrowski and Network Centric Warfare

Transforming Military Force: The Legacy of Arthur Cebrowski and Network Centric Warfare

Volumn , Issue , 2007, Pages 1-249

  Blaker, James R ^a  

^a SCIENCE APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85190353976     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Book

References (46)

1. Chua, Amy. World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred an. Global Instability. New York: Doubleday, 2003.
2. De Vries, Jan. European Urbanization, 1500-1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Universit. Press, 1984.
3. *Friedman, Thomas L. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999.
4. *Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: WW Norton & Co., 2002.
5. *Murray, John Courtney. "The Declaration of Religious Freedom: Its Deeper Significance." America 114 (April 23, 1966): 592-93.
6. *Murray, John Courtney. "The Issue of Church and State at Vatican II." Theological Studies 27 (1966): 580-606.
7. *Murray, John Courtney. The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964.
8. *Murray, John Courtney. The Problem of Religious Freedom. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1965.
9. *Murray, John Courtney. We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 1960.
10. *Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967.
11. Curran, Charles. Catholic Social Teaching, 1891-Present: A Historical, Theological, and Ethical Analysis. Washington, DC: Georgetwon University Press, 2002.
12. Ferguson, Thomas P. Catholic and American: The Political Theology of John Courtney Murray. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1993.
13. Finnis, John. "Aquinas' Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Spring 2006 ed. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2006/entries/aquinas-moral-political/.
14. *Gilson, Etienne. The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994.
15. Heyking, John von. Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2001.
16. Hooper, Leon J. The Ethics of Discourse: The Social Philosophy of John Courtney Murray. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1986.
17. *McInerny, Ralph. Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1997.
18. *Zumkeller, Adolar. O.S.A., (1986). Augustine's Ideal of Religious Life. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986. The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)
19. *Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt, eds. In Athena's Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age. Santa Monica: Rand, 1997. A set of essays largely by observers of the RMA who are generally supportive of the editors' argument that "Mars, the old brute-force god of war, must give way to Athena, the well-armed goddess of wisdom. Accepting Athena as the patroness of this information age represents a first step not only for preparing for future conflicts, but also for preventing them."
20. *Galdi, Theodor M. Revolution in Military Affairs? Competing Concepts, OrganizationalResponses, Outstanding Issues. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, CRS 95-117O-F, 1995. http://www.fas.org/man/crs/95-1170.htm. A good overview of the intellectual currents at the height of the debate inside the Pentagon on the RMA in the mid-1990s.
21. *Metz, Steven. Armed Conflict in the 21st Century: The Information Revolution and Post-Modern Warfare. Carlyle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College, March 2000. A solid, cautious appraisal that portrays the professional skepticism facing Owens, Cebrowski, and the other "revolutionaries" in the mid-1990s.
22. *O'Hanlon, Michael. Technological Change and the Future of Warfare. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000. A readable overview of some of the key technologies associated with the RMA and an example of the tendency of observers to assume, incorrectly, that the "revolutionaries" were so infatuated by technology, they lost sight of the utility of military culture and tradition. Available online at http://brookings.nap.edu/books/0815764391/html/index.html.
23. *Owens, William. High Seas. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995. First extended public discussion of the thinking in the late 1980s and early 1990s that led to the efforts by Cebrowski and Owens to start the American RMA.
24. *Owens, William. Lifting the Fog of War. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2000. An inside view of the American RMA by one of its prime architects.
25. *Bassford, Christopher. Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America, 1815-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Bassford, an articulate admirer of Clausewitz, is an American historian and editor of the educational web site "The Clausewitz Homepage."
26. *Creveld, Martin van. The Transformation of War. New York: The Free Press, 1991. Creveld, a prolific and widely respected historian argues Clausewitz's views were brilliant and insightful for warfare in the past but irrelevant for today's problems of terrorism and ideologically or religious-based conflict.
27. Corn, Tony. "Clausewitz in Wonderland." Policy Review. Web special: Hoover Institution, September 2006. http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/4268401.html.
28. *Howard, Michael E., and Peter Paret, eds. and translators. On War by Carl von Clausewitz. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976, rev. 1984. This is the best translation of Clausewitz's influential work, Vom Kriege.
29. *Keegan, John. A History of Warfare. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. First Vintage Books ed. A broad, smoothly written exploration of, among other things, the cultural roots of armed conflict with a critique of the Clausewitz description of war as an extension of politics.
30. *Metz, Steven. "A Wake for Clausewitz: Toward a Philosophy of 21st-Century Warfare." Parameters (Winter 1994-95): 126-32.
31. *Murray, Williamson. "Clausewitz Out, Computer In: Military Culture and TechnologicalHubris." National Interest (Summer 1997). One of the best examples of the angst Cebrowski and Owens generated among some military historians and of the misinterpretationsome of them have of the revolutionaries' views.
32. *Barnett, Thomas P.M. "The Seven Deadly Sins of Network-Centric Warfare." Proceedings of the Naval Institute (January 1999): 36-42. Available online at http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/published/7d.htm. Barnett's critique of Cebrowski's views of network centric warfare in this article brought the two together in an intellectual partnership that led Cebrowski into grand international theory.
33. *Cares, Jeffrey R., Raymond J. Christian, and Robert C. Manke. Fundamentals of Distributed, Networked Military Forces and the Engineeriong of Distributed Systems. Newport, RI: U.S. Navy, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, NUWC-NPT Technical Report 11,366, May 9, 2002. Available online at http://www.alidade.net/recent_research/NUWC_TR11366.pdf. This report outlines the characteristics of distributed, networked forces, discusses how to engineer them, and discusses the performance advantages in shifting from centralized control of forces to a decentralized/nonlinear, networked system.
34. Cebrowski, Arthur, and John Garstka. "Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future." Proceedings of the Naval Institute (January 1998). This is the most extensive discussion of network centric operations authored (in part) by Cebrowski and probably the most cited in discussions of his views. Although the article is heavy on assertions and skimpy on the backup for them, it offers a good window to the substance of his thinking and style with which he articulated it.
35. *Dewey, John. The Public and Its Problems. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1927. This book provided part of the philosophical base for Cebrowski's concept of network centric operations, in particular his view that increased transactions (two-way flows of information) among the individuals in a military force accelerate accurate corporate knowledge of theforce. Dewey's 1927 book stems from a debate with journalist Walter Lippmann regarding the growth of mass media (radio and movies primarily) and what is now, in the digital Information Age, often referred to as "information overload." Lippmann had argued that it was the function of elites to use information for thought and action in order to mold and direct the emotive actions of the public. Dewey used The Public and Its Problems to argue the public was capable by itself of sorting through the new deluge of information to rational decisions and to popularize his philosophical arguments in favor of the beneficial effects of increased transactions.
36. *Gallager, Robert. Information Theory and Reliable Communication. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1968.
37. *Gilder, George. "Metcalf 's Law and Legacy." Forbes ASAP (September 1, 1993). http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~gaj1/metgg.html.
38. Gilder, George. Telecosm. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
39. MacKay, David J.C. Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itprnn/book.pdf.
40. *McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. Source of the "medium is the message" phrase from his argument that media-spoken, written, printed words and graphics-shape human activity. McLuhan later expanded this hypothesis in projections of, among other things, the internet.
41. *Moore, Gordon E. "Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits." Electronics 38, no. 8 (April 19, 1965): 114-17. This was the article in which Moore commented that the complexity of minimum cost semiconductor components had doubled per year since the first prototype microchip was produced in 1959, thereby coining "Moore's Law" and the suggestion that computing power at fixed cost is doubling every 18 months.
42. *Nye, Jr., Joseph S., and William A. Owens. "America's Information Edge." Foreign Affairs (March/April 1996): 20-36.
43. *Shannon, Claude E. "A Mathematical Theory of Communication." Bell System Technical Journal, no. 27 (July, October 1948): 379-423, 623-656. http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf
44. Tuomi, Ilkka. "The Lives and Death of Moore's Law." In First Monday (peer-reviewed journal on the internet, University of Illinois at Chicago, November 2002). A good overview and commentary on the significance of Moore's Law. http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_11/tuomi/index.html.
45. Wesensten, Nancy J., Thomas Balkin, and Gregory Belenky. "Cognitive Readiness in Network-Centric Operations." Parameters (Spring 2005). An experimental psychologist, psychiatrist, and behavioralist bridge the gap between advances in information technology and human cognition to elucidate the notions of self-synchronization and overwhelming complexity. An excellent overview of the dynamics behind Cebrowski's argument that increasing transaction rates will increase learning rates, which, in turn, will increase the generation of better options for action that lead to the ability to impose overwhelming complexity on an opponent.
46. *Wilson, Clay. "Network Centric Warfare: Background and Oversight Issues for Congress." Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, June 2, 2004. http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/33858.pdf. A solid, intelligible description of the technologies behind the notion of network centric warfare and their vulnerabilities.