Some Cautionary Thoughts on Information Warfare

O NE OF THE most curious characteristics of the United States military establishment since World War II has been its tendency to become slavishly addicted to fads. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, fascination with nuclear weapons to the exclusion of almost everything else led the Army to such unhappy experiments as the " pentomic divi­ sion " and the " Davy Crockett. " 1 The Air Force, not to be outdone, put nuclear weapons on fighters. All of this had the result of leaving the services poorly prepared to fight a limited conventional war in Korea and a limited unconventional war in Vietnam. 2 Then dur­ ing the late 1970s and the heyday of the military reform movement, maneuver warfare and mission-oriented tactics became the buzzwords. The new enthusiasts held up the German army of World War II as a military paradigm, its capabilities misun­ derstood by many people who had little or no knowl­ edge of the primary German sources. 3 Now, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, the United States military is once again awash in such catchphrases. Perhaps the first to weigh in was John Warden III, a USAF colonel who even before the war had posited the idea that air forces could essentially win wars alone by conducting " parallel war. " This no­ tion, combined with the apparent success of the air cam­ paign in the Gulf and some very dubious historical in­ terpretation, has given lots of ammunition to those who would accuse air forces of engaging in muddled thinking. 4 Another even more amorphous term is informa­ tion war. Although it has been defined in several dif­ ferent ways, the term has appeared increasingly In books, articles in professional military journals, and official publications.