By Cpl Jonathan Garland
Technology Reporter
MILITARY and civilian planners from around the world gathered at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on May 20 to discuss the role of Network-Centric Warfare (NCW) in the recent Middle East conflict and in future warfare.

The conference described NCW as treating platforms as nodes of a network – since all elements of the network are securely connected, they can collect, share, and access information.

CDF Gen Peter Cosgrove said NCW was built on two dimensions that were closely related and mutually reinforcing – the human and network dimensions.

“The human dimension is based on mission command and our commitment to professional mastery, while the network dimension represents the technical side of NCW,” he said.

“As information and network-related warfighting techniques start to mature and to predominate, outcomes will be swifter, as dramatic and paradoxically less bloody than the classic force-on-force, attritionist paradigm of the past.”

Gen Cosgrove went on to give some examples of NCW from the recent conflict in the Middle East.

He cited the Op Falconer home page, which posted information throughout the campaign and enabled everybody in the entire command chain to access up-to-date and relevant information.

As another example, he spoke about the ability to monitor the location and movement of coalition forces by GPS technology.

“This was a huge advantage to commanders and to the staff who supported them from an intelligence and fire support view and the technology proliferated in the Coalition ground forces.

“It is cheap, simple and available technology and works effectively, acknowledging some environmental limitations which we know quite well.

“We need to bring NCW to the forefront of our thinking about future war, because this idea will make us more effective at warfighting.”

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