GOING VIRAL: PREPARING GROUND FORCES FOR COMBAT IN THE INFORMATION AGE
Don Gomez and Tucker Chase | 09.01.22
Going Viral: Preparing Ground Forces for Combat in the Information Age
Of all the lessons of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, one stands out: the importance of achieving dominance in the information domain. From the first days of the war, Ukraine has used information to shape the course of the conflict to its advantage. But American policymakers should not be too quick to mock Russia’s failures in the information environment: the US military itself is underprepared for war in the information age, where the actions of military units and individual soldiers may go viral in an instant. As the US Army continues to reconceptualize the role of information as both a weapon and a battlespace, it should learn some lessons from Ukraine’s success.
Failing to Train for Warfare in the Information Domain
Despite impressive strides by the US military to elevate the importance of information in modern warfare, gaps remain that threaten to hinder its efforts in future conflicts. Senior leaders still tend to have a shortsighted view of information operations: at best, they view it as something that can help support or shape the decisive operation; at worst, it’s an afterthought. Maneuver commanders instinctively prioritize their efforts to dominate air, ground, and other domains, rather than focusing on the information space. They ignore Major General Robert Scales’s advice that armies should prioritize “capturing the psycho-cultural rather than the geographical high ground.”
In addition, the centralization of information operations authorities at echelons above the brigade level inhibits tactical commanders. Over the past two decades of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, junior officers who attempted to leverage information confronted numerous protocols and grueling approval timelines as division and joint task force commands retained oversight in most cases. If this restrictive authority structure severely limited the effectiveness of information in counterinsurgency, then it will be crippling in large-scale combat operations, where the rapid pace of operations demands immediate exploitation of information—a reality that has been demonstrated daily in the current Russia-Ukraine conflict.
https://mwi.usma.edu/going-viral-preparing-ground-forces-for-combat-in-the-information-age/
