information warfare command & control warfare 

Information Operations

Information warfare was institutionalised in the U.S. with the creation of the Air Force Information Warfare Center (1993),1 the Fleet Information Warfare Center (1995)2 and the Army Land Information Warfare Activity (1995).3 By that time other States noticed these efforts made by the United States, consequently Boris Yeltsin deemed it “necessary to devote more attention to the development of the entire complex of the means of information warfare”.4 Similarly the Chinese noted in 1995: “In the near future, information warfare will control the form and future of war. We recognise this developmental trend of information warfare and see it as a driving force in the modernisation of China’s military and combat readiness. This trend will be highly critical to achieving victory in future wars”.5 In 1996, spearheaded by the United States Army, the United States adopted a less ‘belligerent’ notion, namely: ‘information operations’.6

1 Air Intelligence Agency, “Air Force Information Warfare Center,” Air Force Intelligence Agency Almanac, no. 97 (August, 1997a). p. 20; Dan Kuehl, “Joint Information Warfare: An Information-Age Paradigm for Jointness,” Strategic Forum Institute for National Strategic Studies, no. 105 (March, 1997). p. 2.

2 Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, OPNAV Instruction 3430.26: Implementing Instruction for Information Warfare/Command and Control Warfare (IW/C2W), 1995a). p. 8.

3 Richard A. Sizer, “Land Information Warfare Activity,” Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin (January-March, 1997).

4 James Adams, The Next World War: Computers are the Weapons and the Front Line is Everywhere (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001). pp. 238, 239, 244.

5 Wang Pufeng, “The Challenge of Information Warfare,” in Chinese Views of Future Warfare, ed. Michael Pillsbury (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1998), 317-326. p. 318.

6 United States Army, Field Manual no. 100-6: Information Operations (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996).