How the West Was Won: The Essence of Network-Centric Operations

The connectedness of the Information Age has increased the signature of complexity in human interactions. It has not changed the nature of war, but has changed its character. Over the last decade the military has sought to adapt to this new character of war through a program called transformation. The Department of Defense has chosen Network-Centric Operations (NCO), originally called Network-Centric Warfare (NCW), as the means of transformation. The military is tentative about NCO, however, and often concentrates on only its technological aspects and disregards the doctrinal and organizational changes that are also important. The military's hesitancy to adopt NCO as an operational concept for transformation and tendency to over pursue its technological aspects are partly because neither the founders nor critics of NCO have defined its essence. This thesis proposes that the essence of NCO is dynamic operational mutual support (DOMS). The essence of something is its ultimate and unique nature that helps clarify its structure and aids in understanding.