Network-Centric Warfare: How Navies Learned to Fight Smarter Through Three World Wars

by Norman Friedman

This book explains what network-centric warfare is, and how it works, using concrete historical naval examples rather than the usual abstractions. It argues that navies invented this style of warfare over the last century, led by the Royal Navy, and that the wars of that century, culminating in the Cold War, show how networked warfare worked - and did not work.These wars also illustrate what net-on-net warfare means; most exponents of the new style of war assume that the United States will enjoy a monopoly on it. This account is important to all the services; it is naval because navies were the first to use network-centric approaches (the book does take national air defense into account, because air defense systems deeply influenced naval development). This approach is probably the only way a reader can get a realistic feeling for what the new style of war offers, and also for what is needed to make it work. Thus the book concentrates on the tactical picture which the network is erected to help form and to disseminate, rather than, as is usual, the communications network itself. This approach makes it possible to evaluate different possible contributions to a network-centric system, because it focuses on what the warriors using the picture really want and need. Without such a focus, the needs of networked warfare reduce simply to the desire for more and more information, delivered at greater and greater speeds. Although it concentrates on naval examples, this book is of vital importance to all the services. It is the first book about network-centric warfare to deal in concrete examples, and the first to use actual history to illuminate current operational concepts.It also offers considerable new light on the major naval battles of the World Wars, hence ought to be of intense interest to historians. For example, it offers a new way of understanding the naval revolution wrought in the pre-1914 Royal Navy by Admiral Sir John Fisher.

Genres: Military Fiction, History

416 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2009

About the author

Norman Friedman is a prominent naval analyst and the author of more than thirty books covering a range of naval subjects, from warship histories to contemporary defense issues.

Reviews

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given the near universal respect Norman Friedman has earned by his many authoritative books on Naval topics, rating his Network-Centric Warfare is as tender a proposition as attempting to review Tolstoy’s finest. The four stars may say more about me as a reader than Naval Architect Friedman as an author.

For those of us who think of such things, one of history’s most spectacular victories at sea was Nelson’s destruction of the combined French and Spanish Fleets at Trafalgar. It is amazing to consider these vast ships exchanging iron shot at walking speeds. Less considered is the amount of time Nelson spent moving his fleet about to force the battle. As much as the victory was “wooden ships and iron men”; it was also a problem in locating, identifying and targeting enemy ships. England having committed itself to existence as a colonial power also committed itself to preeminence in sea power.

England was therefore early in understanding that winning was not just having the most and the best, it also had to have the ability to concentrate forces where it was most likely to force defeat on possible opposition.
This is the question driving Freidmans history: How does a sea power collect, organize and execute strategic and tactical decisions in a world where fleets cruse at many times that of sailing ships and carry with them fleet killing air power?

The Royal Navy lead in addressing what was called command and control and began formulating answers about 100 years before modern satellite systems. Along the way England passed maritime preeminence and for the moment that title is in the hands of the United States. Consequently Network-Centric Warfare begins with The Royal Navy, share some intermediate coverage with mostly European power , obvious comments with Japan and incudes some speculation on Russian capabilities. Given its publication date of 2009, it is remarkable how much we now need expanded attention to Chinese techniques and technologies.

This is a book about machines, technologies and engineering limits. Proto-computers and direction-finding networks are sexy topics for a much smaller audience than those who rather look and weapons and ships and calculations of speed and thickness of plating. What Friedman makes clear is that the nerdy topics, command and control systems are decisive, war winning and deserving of serious consideration.

Some of the most fascinating pages are those where in he analyzed the causes and mistakes that produced the 1988 shoot down of an Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes and other dramatic events such as the British loss of the HMS Sheffield and the Israeli loss of the Eilat. In each case Friedman ignores the politics and any other distractions, focusing on what the command and control systems and their operators could and could not do. No apologies to anyone, let the electronic facts speak alone.

The book is a lot about the technological, physical and financial limits on how different navies solved the various problems in locating the enemy, evaluating the several threats any given force represents and best targeting either offensive of defensive capabilities.

In World War II, aircraft carriers depended on a few miles over the horizon information with which command could make a best guess on how to intercept fleets that would never be on the same side of the horizon. Just as tricky carriers had to find ways to best organize defense such that a few defenders could be located where they could best intercept an approaching air strike.

A solution at the time was vectoring. In essence: We think they are somewhere generally over there. Flay this way and maybe get in sight of them.

As air craft speed multiplied from a few hundred miles an hour to over 1000 and missiles strikes could emerge from underwater to strike at even faster speeds vectoring stopped being sufficient. Who was attacking with what from how far off needed degrees of precision and timely delivery of analysis manage densities of thereat Nelson could not have imagined. The same decision-makers had to have mirror image analysis to formulate and execute attack plans.
In reaching decisions, Friedman makes the case that warfare has to be picture centric. Taking advantage of the human ability to read graphic displays of his theater or immediate role in that theater. Decisions have to be made by humans receiving actionable information, with minimal lag time between detection and data analysis and yielding the specific kinds of directions for either one ship (aircraft) or fleet while engaged in defense and offensive action). Only networks of data systems can keep commands informed fast enough to support either immediate tactical actions or fleet level commitments. Not only does the computers and displays matter, the language of decision-making matters.

What navies developed were several sets of solutions initially designed to address these questions in parts. Computers, as they became small enough would take over increasing amounts of the problem. Finding space on ships, and later aircraft consumes as much of the text as the problems of budgets and design standards. Friedman’s over dependence on just in time miniaturization, predicted by Moore’s law (Gordon Moore CEO of Intel predicted in 1965 that computer power would double every year with no increase in the size or weight of the computer. The law appears to remains a reasonable estimate well beyond the initial 10 years of its expected applicability) almost has him failing to mention that the modern computer problem centers on software rather than the size and processing power of the hardware.

Hard to believe but this is just a general overview of what Friedman covers in a tightly written 343 pages. Tightly worded or not there is a huge amount of text in the 85 pages of notes and even the illustrations contain long and important captions.

Reading Network-Centric Warfare means trying to keep up with the relationship between words, mission statements and contract requirements and the size, location and alpha-numeric designations of equipment. The result is going to be exciting reading for a very narrow range of reader. However, if you want to understand what all those video screens are about and how they came to be, this book is recommended.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Network-centric warfare is a fairly heavy text, covering the development of (primarily) naval and air network (or picture)-centric warfare approaches from the earliest part of the 20th century to it’s last decade, with most of the text covering the Cold War period (understandably, given that most of the technical development took place during this period). The discussion covers both the equipment used and the benefits it conferred to units during operations, and looks at both strategic and tactical control of assets and weapons systems.

The discussion of how the United States, Soviet and British navies managed the use of data to inform tactical decisions is enlightening and interesting, and underlines the importance of looking beyond a vessels’ weapons systems when examining a navies’ capabilities. As warfare has become more complex, and weapons-systems more capable, it has become ever-more important to coordinate vessels and aircraft, and manage weapons systems, from a ‘picture-centric’ perspective. The challenge of creating and then using this picture-centric perspective, in a rapidly-evolving technological environment, is the core of the book.

It’s not particularly easy-reading – there are almost fourteen pages of acronyms (quite appropriate, given the alphabet-soup of electronic-warfare systems and organisations that propagated in the post-World War Two period), and they don’t cover all of the acronyms used in the book – and some of the concepts require some thought, but its invaluable reading to anyone looking to understand naval and then naval/air operations in the 20th century, well researched and well-written, and it’s hard to ask for more than that.

[Joshua Dewald · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was pretty dense, but I picked up a lot of interesting info about the history of Naval sensor technology to build tactical and strategic pictures. It didn't just discuss thr US either but presented worldwide naval info over time.

Defintely recommend if that's your sort of thing. I dont read a lot of books about military technology and strategy so can't exactly compare it.