Network Centric Warfare; Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority

xiv, 284 pages. Illustrations. Appendix. Acronyms. Bibliography. This is one of the CCRP Publication Series. David Stephen Alberts (born 1942) is a former American Director of Research for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (OASD) for Networks and Information Integration (NII). Alberts' academic career has included serving as first Director of the Computer Science Program at NYU and has held professional rank posts at NYU Graduate School of Business, CUNY, and most recently as a Research Professor at George Mason University. He was the Director, Advanced Concepts, Technologies, and Information Strategies (ACTIS), Deputy Director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies, and the executive agent for DoD's Command and Control Research Program. This included responsibility for the Center for Advanced Concepts and Technology (ACT) and the School of Information Warfare and Strategy (SIWS) at the National Defense University. The term "network-centric warfare" and associated concepts first appeared in the Department of Navy's publication, "Copernicus: C4ISR for the 21st Century." The ideas of networking sensors, commanders, and shooters to flatten the hierarchy, reduce the operational pause, enhance precision, and increase speed of command were captured in this document. As a distinct concept, network-centric warfare first appeared publicly in a 1998 US Naval Institute Proceedings article by Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski and John Garstka. The first complete articulation of the idea was contained in the book Network Centric Warfare : Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority by David S. Alberts, John Garstka and Frederick Stein. This book derived a new theory of warfare from a series of case studies on how business was using information and communication technologies to improve situation analysis, control inventory and production, and monitor customer relations.…