Alright, there are a few of us in the blogosphere that follow this crazy stuff. Yeah, I know, we’re like those Area 51-types that see something not really there, just behind that door. And, no, we are NOT all hopped-up on “acid” or “Mary Jane”! Force utilization and the changes and strides made over time are very real, and something that makes some folks just sit up and wanna read more.

Now, when one gets a missive straight from the core area of development in regards to warfare, and the act of prosecuting a war, ya just gotta dig a little bit deeper. This morning, in my regularly scheduled morning memo from the US Army, my inbox gets a jolt! The team at Stand-To! are covering a very germane subject termed battle command. To those of us working and writing about generational warfare, and this aligns with my 5GW posts quite well, their first installment entitled Battle Command - Part One has been posted to those within the US Army command structure - and some of us that read their site and get their daily e-mails.

If you don’t have the time to wander on over to Stand-To!, please take a moment and read their latest sidebar article:

“What is it? Battle Command is the art and science of applying leadership and decision making to achieve mission success. Battle Command leverages technology to achieve information and decision superiority. Battle Command systems enable leaders to gain knowledge to enhance the speed and accuracy of decision making. Battle Command provides Commanders and Leaders with the ability to see first, understand first, act first, and finish decisively.

What has the Army done? Recent combat operations highlight the criticality of beyond line of sight mobile communications, enhanced situation awareness, and synchronization of force application. Battle Command provides improved information systems to make visible actionable information and reduce the cycle time on key commander decisions. The Army has created a better common operational picture with enhancements made to Blue Force Tracking and Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2). With Joint Intelligence Operations Capability - Iraq (JIOC-I) the Army has integrated and fused intelligence that is relevant and timely within a specific geospatial area of operation for Commander’s and Leaders. Also, the Army has integrated unmanned Aerial Systems and their imagery feeds, and we have added Biometric enhancements to our Human Intelligence (HUMIT) data collection. The Army’s Joint Battle Command network has increased connectivity with JNN, putting more soldiers on the network with higher throughput, so that they are able to push more Command & Control information to Battalion. The Army also has experimented with collaboration tools such as Information Dissemination Management - Tactical (IDM-T) and Command Post of the Future (CPoF), and information systems similar to Combined Information Network Data Exchange (CIDNE) and FusionNet, which provide valuable information to Commanders. The Army has accelerated the fielding of critical Battle Command systems to standardize capabilities, ensuring interoperability of operational and tactical organizations. These capabilities improve joint interdependency as well as horizontal and vertical situational awareness to the platoon level. The Army continues to work with DOD agencies to bring the Joint community closer to a shared common operational picture.”

Now, what interests me very much is the threading together, within the major FBCB2 (Blue Force Tracking and Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below), of joint intelligence, information dissemination, and overall coordination within the command structure. This is where I have been leading us all in my 5GW posts. We are doing a better job and have made significant strides in these areas, but how does our use of 5GW differ from those of our enemy? In fact, how much of what we have done is being borrowed, or emulated, by our enemy. My next few posts are now going to be focused on those two very important questions.

For review, here are my 5GW posts, in order from oldest to newest:

Seems the family has a rift
We Blew Through 4th Generation Warfare!
Boundaries for the Fourth Generation
Clues to the 5th: Shorter Chains?

And, please check out as many resources that you can find where this subject, generational warfare, are being written about, and send on to me. I am a major consumer of this subject - a hobby ya might say.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 10:28 and is filed under 5GW, ARMY, Commitment, Fix4RSO, GWOT, Patriotism, StandTo, Warfare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.