As a rule, the transition is more readily observed in retrospect. Humans are intrinsically poor at recognising when a transition is occurring despite the efforts of military reformers. General William DePuy and General Donn Starry sought a mathematical and technological approach to defeating the Soviet Motor Rifles in Europe after a decade of failing to defeat communists in Vietnam. From 1919 Hans Von Seeckt sought to create an edge for the next war through doctrinal development to harness emerging technology amidst the restrictions of the post-Versailles world. In 1865, Moltke the Elder renewed the same approach in bettering the General Staff planners to confront the realities of war with France and Austria ahead of the unification of the Germanic state. The seven short years following the 1805 defeat by Napoleon at Jenna-Auerstadt allowed Gerhard von Scharnhorst to engender greater education within the Prussian military as a way to create stronger leadership. History offers examples of reformers who sought to harness the ‘secret sauce’ of their respective military institutions to confront the challenge of the day. What if the informational renaissance is simply a byproduct of western military strategies that have been unable to suppress, neutralise, or destroy (extremist) ideology in a physical sense leaving the informational ‘call for fire’ as the only conceivable method? These words may well reside in the minds of many already grappling with the subject of injecting informational effects into the forefront of the minds of operational planners to establish information as a ‘cognitive main effort’. Sun Tzu’s wisdom of winning without fighting perhaps manifests as a renewed emphasis on information in a world where friendly casualties are an infrequent occurrence. The operational artistry is perhaps seeing and understanding when the mental and moral are able to be decisively influenced and aligning the information effects as needed.Ĭoffee-break musings on the subject and a groundswell of interest among coalition practitioners offers opportunities to collaboratively cement a more cogent and widespread proliferation of what it means to use information in waging war. The physical is enduring, but the mental and moral subjectively wax and wane in both an allied, civilian and adversarial sense. Information and its application in the operational art is offered here as the connector between them. What does that say about the enduring quest for humans to decisively harness information or the intrinsic power of the written word? J.F.C Fuller suggests that moral and mental forces exert a greater influence on the nature and outcome of war, but they are inseparable from the physical. Perhaps they might manifest in the mind’s eye as First World War leaflet drops in Europe that strangely became early twenty-first century leaflet drops in the Middle East. To the operations officer, usually unschooled in these dark arts, they appear to state the same thing. These are taken to mean effects generated through and with information. In a time of increasing emphasis on the information domain, perhaps the words ‘See first, understand first, disseminate decisively’ offer a mantra for modern practitioners using information to wage war? The terms we’re accustomed to at the battlegroup and brigade tactical level are ‘information operations’ and ‘information actions’.
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