Texts and Papers

Advanced Displays: Windows into Information Warfare (Lance A. Glasser)

In order to fight and win on the battlefield of the future, U.S. forces must first win the information war.

Defending Cyberspace and Other Metaphors (Martin Libicki, National Defense University, NDU Press Book, February 1997)

Conflict has classically been modeled by orthogonal lines of defense and attack. Today's asymmetric warfare is about points, blots, and gated fences, topological forms with particular applicability to information warfare.

Ensuring Joint Force Superiority in the Information Age (Defense Issues, Volume 11, Number 82)

We are just scratching the surface on what can be done. We are just at the beginning of exploiting information systems for our warfighters.

The Information War (Peter Lamborn Wilson)

A speech given at the opening of Public Netbase t0 on the 17th of March 1995.

Information War and Cyberspace Security (RAND Research Review, Fall 1995)

In this issue of the RAND Research Review, [we] touch on some of the broad societal implications of the information revolution and look in greater detail at what it may mean for the conduct of war and the nation's security.

Information Warfare and Its Importance (USAF Fact Sheet 95-20)

There are many views on what constitutes information warfare, but the U.S. Air Force defines it as "any action to deny, exploit, corrupt or destroy the enemy's information and its functions while protecting Air Force assets against those actions and exploiting its own military information operations." Therefore, information warfare is any action which attacks, protects or uses military information functions or operations.

The Mesh and the Net - Speculations on Armed Conflict In an Age of Free Silicon (Martin Libicki, National Defense University, McNair Paper 28, March 1984)

The Next Enemy (Martin Libicki, National Defense University, Strategic Forum, INSS, Number 35, July 1995)

Future threats may be divided into four categories: peers, bullies, terrorism, and chaos. The threat environment twenty years hence is unlikely to be of one type. Nevertheless, framing the choices facing planners shows what the U.S. armed forces might look like if one or another type of threat were to become the predominant focus of the Defense Department.

Papers on Information Warfare

SEVERAL different hypertext documents on information warfare. Highly recommended!

The Principles of War in the 21st Century: Strategic Considerations (William T. Johnsen Douglas V. Johnson II James O. Kievit Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr. and Steven Metz)

Because war at the strategic level is an intellectual process and the development and implementation of strategy is a creative activity, some form of intellectual framework is required to shape the strategist's thought processes.

Strategic Information Warfare: A New Face of War (Roger C. Molander, Andrew S. Riddile, Peter A. Wilson, RAND 1996)

This report summarizes research performed by RAND for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence).

A Theory of Information Warfare. Preparing for 2020. (Colonel Richard Szafranski, USAF)

The United States should expect that its information systems are vulnerable to attack. It should further expect that attacks, when they come, may come in advance of any formal declaration of hostile intent by an adversary state.

The Unintended Consequences of Information Technologies (Dr. David S. Alberts, National Defense University, NDU Press Book, April 1996)

The purpose of this analysis is to identify a strategy for introducing and using information age technologies that accomplishes two things: first, the identification and avoidance of adverse unintended consequences associated with the introduction and utilization of information technologies; and second, the ability to recognize and capitalize on unexpected opportunities.

Weapons of Mass Protection (Chris Morris, Janet Morris, Thomas Baines)

Nonlethality, information warfare, and airpower in the age of chaos.

What is Information Warfare? (Martin Libicki, National Defense University, ACIS Papers 3, August 1995)

Libicki separates seven different forms of information warfare: 1) command-and-control warfare, 2) intelligence-based warfare, 3) electronic warfare, 4) psychological warfare, 5) hacker warfare, 6) economic information warfare and 7) cyber warfare.