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

Friedman PhD., Norman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1591142865 ISBN 13: 9781591142867

Publisher: Naval Institute Press, 2009

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Norman Friedman is a prominent defense analyst and historian specializing in the intersection between policy, strategy, and technology, mainly in a naval context. He has published more than forty books. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Commodore Dudley W. Knox medal by the Naval Historical Foundation, the Samuel Eliot Morrison award by the Naval Order of the United States, the Westminster Prize awarded by the Royal United Service Institute, and the Anderson Medal of the British Society for Nautical Research. He has twice received the John Lyman Award from the North American Society for Oceanic History. He lives in New York City.
 

Edition details

• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1591142865
• ISBN 13: 9781591142867
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416