In July 2017, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) issued a change to United States doctrine, elevating information to its current position as the seventh joint function. This was done in recognition of the power information has to support military operations, particularly in the wake of modern technology and social media.
There is nothing new in recognising the power of information, or in seeing information as both a resource and a weapon. It is in transitioning this intellectual understanding into practical application where the Joint Force is failing to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the changing character of war.
Despite the formation of the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) Information Warfare (IW) Division in July 2017, in the ADF there is no clear understanding or agreement of what IW is and how it should be conducted. For some, the power of weaponised information is understated, and for others it is overstated. For some, cyber warfare and information warfare are interchangeable terms and any conversation about IW invariably leads to a conflation of the two. And for some, the use of the word ‘warfare’ implies it is only an option for use in declared physical wars, which is potentially why the ADF’s working description of IW only considers friendly and adversary audiences. In doing so, it effectively fails to consider the not insignificant portion of the global population who are neither (as well as operations pre-Phase 1).
Despite this, the underlying themes of much of the debate are encourag ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
