The Defense Department created the Office of Force Transformation (OFT) in 2001 to foster a culture of innovation across the department and to encourage the development of new concepts of operations. The office was led by Vice Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, who is widely viewed as the father of network-centric warfare.

However, in late 2006, after Cebrowski’s death, OFT was dissolved, and its parts were divided between the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Defense Research and Engineering.

“The leadership of the department didn’t feel that they needed an OFT anymore, so the organization was split up,” said John Garstka, director of forces transformation and resources in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

“From my perspective, we had a capability before – in [Cebrowski’s] words –‘operating at the intersection of unarticulated need and inconsequential change,’ and I don’t think we have that capability anymore,” said Garstka, who previously served as assistant director for concepts and operations at OFT. “Our organization still has a mandate to lead transformation. Now, it’s more from a policy perspective as opposed to an implementation perspective.”

In his last years as director of OFT, Cebrowski argued that power in the Information Age is derived from information sharing, information access and speed — and all facilitated by networked forces.

However, Cebrowski was quick to point out that information technology is only an enabler, and the key to net-centric warfare was not acquiring technology, but changing the behavior of individuals and organizations. That is why he emphasized the importance of the war colleges.

The problem, critics say, is that DOD’s schools aren’t in a position to act as catalysts for this kind of transformational change.

“The schools have a business model that worked well for the Industrial Age, but doesn’t work well for the Information Age,” Garstka said. “Schoolhouses teach doctrine. Other people write doctrine. Research can inform doctrine, but the schools aren’t in a position to do enough of it.”

“The time to be developing the leaders is now to be able to help them think through how to potentially get networked forces to fight better,” he said. Cebrowski “talked about how doctrine isn’t just about the present. It’s about how do you create doctrine. That, to me, is where there’s room for focus and progress.”

— Greg Slabodkin

The Defense Department’s now-defunct Office of Force Transformation (OFT) funded a series of case studies to address the operational effect of networking. The findings of these real-world case studies have been integrated into the curriculum at some DOD schools to evaluate the value of network-centric operations.

The case studies of operations by joint and coalition forces in Iraq, in particular, have been used to share lessons learned.

For example, at the Army War College, Jeffrey Groh, professor of information and technology in warfare, teaches an electives course on the OFT-funded case studies and the influences of net-centricity on the conduct of war.

“We have our students study both the positive and negative aspects of this emerging theory,” said Groh. “They have to think differently and operate comfortably in the information domain. They have to think about the potential problem of information overload. And speed of decision making can also be both good and bad.”

OFT funded nearly two-dozen network-centric case studies based on real-world combat operations or events, including a case study in cooperation with the Army War College on U.S. V Corps and the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

According to the case study’s executive summary, “previous case studies have quite adequately covered the ‘shooter-sensor’ interface from a systems perspective. None, however, have addressed the impact of network centric warfare from the human perspective. This is the essence of land warfare, and why this study is so important.”

Another case study – “U.S./U.K. Coalition Combat Operations during Operation Iraqi Freedom” — evaluated the performance of the Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below Blue Force Tracker system.

That study concluded that the FBCB2/BFT system improved situational awareness among coalition forces in combat.

“There’s also a case study in the works that looks at stability operations,” said John Garstka, director of forces transformation and resources at the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. “One of the insights we’ve learned is that companies and platoons need a lot more information for stability operations than they do for major combat operations.”

Garstka said the net-centric operations case studies funded by OFT cost $100,000 to $500,000 each to produce – in his opinion, a small price.

“The most significant work done on the impact of networking on military operations was all funded by OFT,” Garstka said. “There’s nobody anywhere in the world that has funded comparable research to what we’ve done. You won’t find an academic quality article written by the faculty at any of the DOD schools that deals specifically with the issue of the impact of networking on military operations.”

More research clearly needs to be done, said Garstka — an opinion echoed by a National Research Council study done in 2006 on Network Science. According to the NRC report, “current efforts by academia to describe networks are fragmented and disjointed” and “relatively little of the current research on networks promises to create a science of networks that will generate knowledge adequate to meet the demand.”

— Greg Slabodkin