The following paper was translated by the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service. It is an analysis -- said to be taken by the author from popular sources in the open "foreign press" -- of the U.S. Department of Defense's efforts in information warfare as of February 1996. The information in this article on American views was re-used in a 1997 research paper published by the Hudson Institute think tank which purported to be about "Russian" views on electronic and information warfare, not American.

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 Article Id: druma026__s96017
 Document Id: 0dmhls102fvufh
 Insert Date: 02/08/96
 Purge Date: 02/21/98
 Publish Date: 02/07/96
 Publish Region: Undetermined
 Lines: 447
 
 Title: Russia: Information War
 
 Document Number: FBIS-UMA-96-026-S
 Document Type: Daily Report
 Document Date: 7 February 1996
 Division: RUSSIAN MILITARY
 Subdivision: NAVAL FORCES
 Sourceline: 96UM0128G Moscow MORSKOY SBORNIK in Russian, Oct 19 No
 10, 95 pp 69-73
 AFS Number: 96UM0128G
 Citysource: Moscow MORSKOY SBORNIK
 Language: Russian
 Article Type: CSO
 Subslug: [Article by Major M. Boytsov under rubric "In Foreign
 Navies"]
 
 [FBIS Translated Text] The development of science and
 technology in recent decades engendered discussions about
 the use of robots, psychotronic means, antimatter, and also
 plasma, laser, beam, electronic and other varieties of
 lethal and nonlethal weapons in future wars. Some of these
 ideas already are materializing, and among them a new
 quality of information opposition.

 In general, information is information on people,
 objects, facts, events, phenomena and processes. Information
 opposition is the struggle of sides to win supremacy in the
 quantity, quality and rate of collection of information and
 in its timely analysis and use. It envisages a constant
 upgrading of information processes, information systems and
 information resources simultaneously with the fulfillment
 of measures for improving their protection against enemy
 effect.

 Many examples can be given, and from the most ancient
 times, of the sides' information opposition in various
 spheres. Here is a little-known fact from recent history. In
  1945 the victors over fascist Germany, above all the United
  States, took as war trophies around 350,000 patents and
 over one million inventions, the content of which was
 determined by 40,000 new terms in all fields of science and
 engineering. Later they called that the operation to "carve
 out the brain of the German nation," which allowed the
 United States to increase the competitiveness of its
 commodities and assert its economic leadership in a war-
 weakened world.

 Even today the United States applies greatest efforts
 in this area, openly laying claim to the role of world
 leader and striving to consolidate the order which now has
 formed. Therefore it is advisable to examine the situation
 involving military kinds of information opposition practiced
 and planned specifically by the United States of
 America.1

 It should be noted that new directions of information
 opposition in military affairs appeared in the United
 States in the last one or two decades. They are based first
 of all on historically formed features of Americans'
 military thinking; secondly, on their traditional concept of
 intimidation; and thirdly, on the latest achievements of
 science and engineering. All this can be reduced to the
 following propositions:

 
 reliance on force and on military and military-
 technical superiority;

 use of intimidation based on force and military
 superiority to keep an enemy from a war not needed by the
 
 United States (it is more advantageous not to allow a war
 than to wage it);
 
 imposition of one's own rules of waging war on a
 probable enemy in peacetime and on the enemy in wartime,
 and hitting him in vulnerable and critically important
 places;
 
 a war must be brief, with little blood, and victorious
 for the United States and must be waged as far as possible
 from its own territory;
 
 the profit from victory must be considerably higher
 than the cost of winning it.
 
 The American concept of intimidation has been
 undergoing changes over time. Thus, because of its inherent
 shortcomings (answering nuclear intimidation by an enemy
 equal in might), nuclear intimidation was supplemented by a
 more flexible and effective intimidation with conventional
 weapons, above all precision weapons. Intimidation by
 conventional weapons in turn began to be supplemented by
 intimidation by nonlethal weapons, particularly electronic
 weapons. Now we have seen progress toward war in the
 intellectual sphere, toward a war of machines and
 electronic equipment without a direct involvement in combat
 operations of friendly soldiers, whose losses, to the merit
 of American taxpayers and electors, are taken very
 painfully.

 The circumstance that, as specialists believe, over
 half of the world population will be living in cities in the
  first third of the 21st century and can especially suffer
 in case of wars began to play a role of no small importance
 here. Therefore it is believed that to win victory with
 minimum victims among the civilian population and minimum
 property damage, it will be necessary to employ very
 precise lethal and nonlethal kinds of weapons in order to
 exert sufficient pressure on the opposing country's
 leadership directly or through the population masses of
 cities. Electronic weapons in particular can prove to be
 specifically such a means.

 Achievements in spheres of communications, cybernetics
 and information science as applied to new methods of
 collecting, processing and rapidly communicating
 intelligence to forces, in the methodology and methods of
 computer simulation of the situation and operations, in the
 field of cryptanalysis and so on permit speaking of the
 appearance of a new concept in modern military affairs such
 as "information war." It is noted that already today the
 United States uses three terms in interpreting component
 parts of information opposition:
 
 command and control warfare--C2W;
 information warfare--IW;
 information war.
 
 The first term began to be used in the 1970's and the
 second and third ones in the 1990's after the war against
 Iraq of the coalition headed by the United States.
 Information war even has been elevated to the rank of U.S.
 national strategy, as is evident from the special mission:
 "Win the information war."
 
 It appears that the concept of information war is to
 show a potential enemy the U.S. Armed Forces superiority in
 intelligence and in the capability of blinding, deafening,
 demoralizing and decapitating the command and control system
 of its armed forces and of the state as a whole, and in the
 ability to neutralize his computer equipment and
 communications assets, disrupt information processes and
 destroy information systems and resources "at global
 distances and with the speed of light." This is supposed to
 induce a probable enemy to reject war, having understood
 its lack of prospect for himself. If intimidation does not
 work, use all available means en masse for victory. In
 other words, achieve your goals:
 
 in peacetime by electronic intimidation;
 in a period of threat by use of electronic means
 against military and civilian information and command and
 control structures that is selective in terms of targets
 but massive in terms of intensity;

 during a military conflict by massive use both of
 electronic as well as of fire-delivery means against all
 systems of the aforementioned targets.
 
 A particular kind of information war is the
 destruction by "nonlethal weapons" (read: electronic
 weapons) of the most important elements of military
 industry and the civilian regional infrastructure by
 disabling, for example, power supply, communications,
 transportation and other installations. But if we are
 speaking about information warfare, and above all about
 warfare against command and control systems
 (IW/C2W), it has two main goals:
 
 offensive--to deceive, disorganize or destroy the enemy
 information infrastructure; to confuse, disorganize or
 totally disrupt the process of operational command and
 control of his forces and assets for rapid neutralization of
 resistance;

 defensive--to protect the friendly information
 infrastructure and the command and control process against
 enemy effect.
 
 The essence of IW/C2W is to take advantage
 of vulnerable places in the enemy system of command and
 control, communications, computer support and intelligence
 in order to diminish the effectiveness of their work, to
 create a false picture or a distorted impression of the
 situation in the enemy, and under conditions of a scarcity
 of time to force him to take incorrect and disadvantageous
 actions. This will permit friendly command and control
 entities, using the advantage of time and reliability of
 information, to preempt the enemy in estimating the
 situation, making a decision, planning, communicating
 orders to those responsible for execution, checking plans
 of action by running them on automated systems for modeling
 combat operations and, finally, to preempt him in final
 organization of combat employment of troops and forces.
 
 Superiority in IW/C2W permits ensuring surprise
 and the possibility of delivering a knock-out blow even
 before a formal announcement of the beginning of combat
 operations (and such blows already have been legitimized),
 and it will permit seizing and holding the initiative and
 concluding the crisis or military conflict as fast as
 possible on terms most favorable to yourself.

 As of today the organization of IW/C2W in
 the United States includes the following aspects:
 1. Deception,
 2. Operations security,
 3. Psychological operations,
 4. Electronic warfare,
 5. Destruction.
 
 Making simultaneous and maximum possible use of all
 means and methods of warfare in their close interaction for
 achieving highest results and concentrating main efforts on
 destroying the most important vulnerable links of the enemy
 information infrastructure and command and control system
 are a guarantee of success here. Radars, surveillance and
 reconnaissance equipment, communications centers and lines,
 transmitting and receiving components of communications
 centers, radio-relay stations, fixed navigational
 equipment, television and radio broadcasting stations and so
 on can be included among vulnerable links of the
 information infrastructure. Other vulnerable links are
 elements of the support infrastructure--electrical power
 stations, power supply lines and so on. And critically
 important vulnerable links include the most important
 components of the command and control system, destruction
 or annihilation of which will entail an immediate decrease
 in capabilities for command and control of troops and
 forces and for effective conduct of combat operations. They
 are military and civilian command and control entities at
 all levels with their electronic equipment (electronic
 computers, automated control systems, electronic data
 bases, communications systems, situation display systems
 and so on), and satellite surveillance, reconnaissance,
 communications and navigation systems. Try to imagine the
 chaos that would arise as a result of a shutdown of
 computers and technical and information systems serving,
 for example, a city's municipal economy.
 
 Now briefly about the five aspects of
 IW/C2W.
  Deception is an element of stratagem which "controls"
 the enemy by creating a false impression in him of the
 actual situation and status of forces opposing him and about
 the concept, time periods and nature of their operations,
 forcing him to act in a predictable manner unfavorable to
 himself. Here are examples: in preparation for and during
 the 1944 Normandy Operation, the Allies used simulated
 assets to create a situation which forced the Germans to
 hold 19 divisions on a diversionary axis at the Strait of
 Dover; feints with a similar concept by U.S. amphibious
 groups with only one Marine brigade, and also
 disinformation and a false electronic situation created in
 the Persian Gulf in 1991 forced the Iraqis to divert 7
 divisions for an antilanding defense.

 Electronic means of deception now are used, first of
 all, by introducing to enemy systems one's own emissions
 that simulate his; secondly, by changing friendly emissions
 or simulating them. In the first instance enemy
 disinformation is achieved by penetrating (intruding) into
 his unclassified and classified information networks and
 channels for transmitting false information in them. In the
 second instance this is, for example, the creation of dummy
 ship groups which divert enemy forces and assets to
 themselves and allow the main body to act covertly and
 suddenly.

 Operations security is a disruption of enemy efforts
 to diminish the effectiveness of operations by opposing
 forces. Added here to various methods of protecting friendly
 information systems are measures for countering enemy
 intelligence, maskirovka [lit. "camouflage", however,
 includes "concealment" and "deception" -- FBIS], secrecy of
 the operational concept, electronic countermeasures,
 delivery of fire and so on.

 Methods of psychological operations in information
 warfare include praising one's own way of life, intimidating
 servicemen and the population of the enemy country by the
 might of one's war machine, undermining their faith in
 their own military and civilian leaders, sowing
 dissatisfaction and psychosis, inciting to disobedience,
 desertion and surrender, and fanning defeatist and
 capitulationist sentiments. For example, such an effect was
 accomplished during the war against Iraq by disseminating
 appropriate video materials inside the country and by radio
 and television broadcasts from outside. The Iraqi command
 even went so far as to confiscate radio receivers from its
 servicemen. As it turned out, around 60 percent of Iraqis
 who surrendered had listened to foreign broadcasts and
 largely gave them credence. The U.S. Voice of the Gulf
 radio, which broadcast for the Iraqis 18 hours a day,
 achieved such authority among them that by transmitting a
 message about the approach of coalition forces to the
 capital of Kuwait, it contributed to the beginning of mass
 flight of Iraqi troops from the city.

 Electronic warfare envisages accomplishing EW
 suppression by jamming enemy communications equipment,
 detection and position finding equipment, navigation
 equipment, and space-based, airborne, ground-based and sea-
 based computer support equipment in order to make him
 blind, deaf and dumb. The success of operations by U.S.
 forces for EW suppression of Iraqi radar and communications
 equipment in the 70 MHZ-18 GHz band is generally known. It
 seemed that new electronic warfare tactics also were tried
 out in combat operations against Iraq. For example, one
 cannot exclude the use of software inserts [programmnyye
 zakladki] in imported gear used in the Iraqi air defense
 system for blocking it at the beginning of the war. And in
 general, EW suppression methods are becoming more and more
 refined and effective. Already by 2000 one can expect the
 appearance of a so-called remote virus weapon against
 computers. This computer virus, such as in the form of
 automatic and controlled software inserts and interference,
 will be introduced via radio channels and laser
 communications links between central computers and user
 terminals. One hardly can overestimate the danger of a
 remote virus weapon (computer virus weapon--CVW) to
 automated control systems and above all to command and
 control of strategic missile complexes. While destruction
 is achieved for now basically by fire-delivery weapons, in
 the near future it will begin to be done more and more also
 with the help of electronic means.

 A few words about the scenario or dynamics of the
 beginning of combat operations. Based on the experience of
 the war against Iraq, the blinding of its command and
 control system began at H minus 22 minutes by the
 destruction of air defense radars, which by the end of the
 first 24 hours of the war permitted disrupting the operation
 of 95 percent of radars by massive employment of antiradar
 missiles and by missile and bombing strikes. Decapitation
 of the Iraqi military command and control system began at H
 minus 9 minutes to H plus 5 minutes by the delivery of air
 strikes and Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missile strikes
 against Armed Forces and National Air Defense command and
 control entities. As a result, in the first two weeks of
 war 60-75 percent of command and control facilities of the
 highest and middle echelons had been destroyed or damaged.

 The delivery of air and missile strikes against
 civilian radio broadcasting and television stations, against
 radio-relay station masts, against bridges over which
 fiber-optic communications lines ran, and against telephone
 and telegraph stations and switching substations contributed
 to disruption of command and control. And destruction of
 the electrical power supply, achieved by analogous strikes
 against electric power stations or by using carbon fiber
 from air-launched cruise missiles against power
 transmission lines, led to disruptions in operations of
 military computers and to creation of an acute time
 shortage for command and control entities.

 As it is noted, SHF-generators ("microwave weapons"),
 intended for disabling space-based, airborne, ground-based
 and sea-based electronic gear by means of a powerful,
 directed-effect electromagnetic pulse, will become a new
 means of warfare against command and control,
 communications, computer support and intelligence systems by
 2005-2010. It is expected that, depending on type and
 location, the effective casualty zone of such generators
 will vary from several hundreds of meters for a cruise
 missile to several tens of kilometers for heavier platforms.
 Figuratively speaking, such selective and massive
 electronic and fire strikes will achieve paralysis of the
 enemy nervous system--his brain, nerves and organs of
 sense, i.e., the command and control, communications,
 computer support and intelligence systems.

 Direction of offensive IW/C2W in the United
 States is assigned to information warfare sections and
 centers set up on staffs of branches of the Armed Forces
 and strategic formations. In the Navy they operate under the
 aegis of the Defense Department National Security Agency and
  the Navy Staff Space and Electronic Warfare Directorate.
 Vertical development of these agencies is expected.
 
 Direction of defensive information warfare evidently will
 become the prerogative of the Defense Information Systems
 Agency, since defensive information warfare is becoming very
 acute even now. Suffice it to say that every day one or two
 attempts at illegal penetration into U.S. Defense
 
 Department cyberspace are recorded, and for the country as
 a whole U.S. business circles suffer annual losses of up to
 $300-500 billion as a result of the penetration of
 electronic hackers into computers ...

 Intelligence agencies of branches of the Armed Forces
 and strategic formations are assigned to provide
 information warfare entities with a complete, timely and
 reliable data base with a determination of vulnerable and
 critically important elements of the command and control and
 information system of probable enemies and an assessment of
 their strong and weak sides, capabilities, disposition and
 intentions. Special importance is attached to the decryption
 service, which supports decisionmaking for "electronic
 attacks." Two propositions concerning weak protection of
 computers against actions of special services and potential
 capabilities of cryptanalysis are fully understood: there
 is no refuge in cybernetics; and today's computer equipment
 fundamentally simplified code-breaking.

 In the future of development of information warfare
 methods, the security of U.S. Armed Forces information
 structures will be substantially increased by 2001 and a
 unified global network of Defense Department information
 systems will be established by 2010. It will be possible to
 perform missions at a tactical, operational and strategic
 level in automated fashion and in real time with its help
 based on continuously updated, complete, reliable, timely
 data that is immediately communicated to users on the
 situation forming in the "combat space." Moreover, it is
 even expected that an opportunity will appear to reliably
 uncover the enemy operations concept, identify the
 information network he has activated to conduct an
 operation, and determine the purpose of forces and assets
 he is using, which will provide great chances to disrupt
 these operations.

 The Americans now believe the crown of the information
 war concept lies in creating a global U.S. Armed Forces
 combat information/control system which continuously
 monitors the status and activity of other countries' armed
 forces and which is intended for winning indisputable
 supremacy over scattered regional command and control and
 communications systems of probable enemies.

 In the opinion of U.S. specialists, capabilities of
 IW/C2W will be increased through the creation of
 new electronic weapons categorized as nonlethal, capable of
 conducting both electronic intimidation of the enemy as
 well as an electronic attack on him. Combining the three
 components--the latest means of surveillance,
 reconnaissance and means for their transmission of
 intelligence; an improved, integrated command and control,
 communications, computer support and intelligence system;
 and precision lethal and nonlethal weapons, including
 electronic weapons--into a single whole will create a
 powerful system of conventional weapons which will become
 the equivalent of nuclear weapons in capabilities for
 intimidation and destruction and will surpass them in
 flexibility of employment.

 And so information warfare, warfare against enemy
 command and control systems, has been put into full swing. A
 modern, flexible, versatile and global means of selective
 intimidation of regional enemies in peacetime and a powerful
 means of ensuring victory in a conventional military
 conflict is being born based on the U.S. Armed Forces
 global combat information/control system that is being
 established and on new kinds of lethal and nonlethal
 precision weapons.
 
 The race for victory in the information war is picking
 up speed.
 
 Footnotes
 1. Based on foreign press materials.

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