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Battle of Cognition: The Future Information-Rich Warfare and the Mind of the Commander
What if the true weak link of the Information Age force is not the hardware of machines, but the software of the human mind? And if so, could it be that the entire conceptual structure of the Information Revolution theorists, at least as it applies to military affairs, is built on sand, on the notorious fickleness of human cognition? These are the questions this book strives to examine. Looking at the command and control of information-rich warfare, the contributors explore its potential new processes, techniques, and organizational structures. As they do so, they find reasons for both optimism and concerns about the limitations of human cognition and supporting technologies in commanding battles in the Information Age.
Since the beginning of the Information Revolution, the military in the United States and elsewhere has been analyzing and implementing the changes driven by the rapidly advancing information technologies. Among military theorists and practitioners, many focus on the Information Revolution's impact on matters of military equipment. Far fewer, however, seem to worry about the gray matter―the mind of the commander, the place where all the information power of the new age is supposed to converge and to yield its mighty dividends.
Consider that it is the human mind, particularly the minds of military commanders and their staffs that remain the pinnacle and the ultimate consumer of the rapidly growing information flows. What if the true weak link of the Information Age force is not the hardware of machines, but the software of the human mind? And if so, could it be that the entire conceptual structure of the Information Revolution theorists, at least as it applies to military affairs, is built on sand, on the notorious fickleness of human cognition? These are the questions this book strives to examine. Looking at the command and control of information-rich warfare, the authors explore its potential new processes, techniques, and organizational structures. As they do so, they find reasons for both optimism and concerns about the limitations of human cognition and supporting technologies in commanding Information Age battles.
Since the beginning of the Information Revolution, the military in the United States and elsewhere has been analyzing and implementing the changes driven by the rapidly advancing information technologies. Among military theorists and practitioners, many focus on the Information Revolution's impact on matters of military equipment. Far fewer, however, seem to worry about the gray matter―the mind of the commander, the place where all the information power of the new age is supposed to converge and to yield its mighty dividends.
Consider that it is the human mind, particularly the minds of military commanders and their staffs that remain the pinnacle and the ultimate consumer of the rapidly growing information flows. What if the true weak link of the Information Age force is not the hardware of machines, but the software of the human mind? And if so, could it be that the entire conceptual structure of the Information Revolution theorists, at least as it applies to military affairs, is built on sand, on the notorious fickleness of human cognition? These are the questions this book strives to examine. Looking at the command and control of information-rich warfare, the authors explore its potential new processes, techniques, and organizational structures. As they do so, they find reasons for both optimism and concerns about the limitations of human cognition and supporting technologies in commanding Information Age battles.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 28, 2018
While everyone seems to get fixated on technological artifacts, such as artificial intelligence and robots on the future battlefield, the limitations of the human mind to understand what is going on, use the staff effectively to help the commander understand and control forces, and other quirks of the human mind still run rampant. Perhaps some of these technological artifacts make it even worse with too much certainty assigned to what we see on the screen, a fixation on every update that pops up, and pattern recognition with faulty, incomplete data. There was also a weird bias toward collecting more information and becoming bogged down by the effort. In moving cautiously to avoid blundering into enemy units, they remained immobilized artillery targets.
The authors repeatedly asserted that there is no relationship between armor and information, but throughout the book they also implied that the superior ISR capabilities produced more lightly armored formations. They admitted that this made surprise encounters that much more catastrophic, so every mention of it in the book irritated me. By 2008, when the book was published, the Army should have been thoroughly disabused of the idea that perfect information provides protection after years of carnage from IEDs in Iraq despite the most intensive ISR collection and analysis in history. Information and armor are necessary, but neither is sufficient alone. Examples in the book cited the bias toward seeking the enemy at the expense of conducting battle damage assessments. Even when they did BDA, they were unable to do it reliably even with the huge and sophisticated array of sensors they had. So lack of armor would be catastrophic blundering into an enemy vehicle you knew was there but thought to be destroyed.
The main author also suggested that actual soldiers must have a hand in continuous development and refinement of battle command technology, since their ability to understand it and trust it is an intrinsic part of it. This includes the rules and other aspects governing automated behaviors of the battle command software, robots, and other systems. There were plenty of examples of confusion because ISR assets moved via automated taskings that surprised the users. Clearly automation would benefit many of these tasks, but only if the unit anticipates and understands their actions as an extension of what they would've done if they had time to do it themselves.
The authors repeatedly asserted that there is no relationship between armor and information, but throughout the book they also implied that the superior ISR capabilities produced more lightly armored formations. They admitted that this made surprise encounters that much more catastrophic, so every mention of it in the book irritated me. By 2008, when the book was published, the Army should have been thoroughly disabused of the idea that perfect information provides protection after years of carnage from IEDs in Iraq despite the most intensive ISR collection and analysis in history. Information and armor are necessary, but neither is sufficient alone. Examples in the book cited the bias toward seeking the enemy at the expense of conducting battle damage assessments. Even when they did BDA, they were unable to do it reliably even with the huge and sophisticated array of sensors they had. So lack of armor would be catastrophic blundering into an enemy vehicle you knew was there but thought to be destroyed.
The main author also suggested that actual soldiers must have a hand in continuous development and refinement of battle command technology, since their ability to understand it and trust it is an intrinsic part of it. This includes the rules and other aspects governing automated behaviors of the battle command software, robots, and other systems. There were plenty of examples of confusion because ISR assets moved via automated taskings that surprised the users. Clearly automation would benefit many of these tasks, but only if the unit anticipates and understands their actions as an extension of what they would've done if they had time to do it themselves.
May 4, 2014
An examination of command structures under conditions provided by information technology. Valuable at a process level but only for the truly specialised
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews