Supporting the Information-Centric 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review: The Case for an Information Service

Information Superiority is an overarching and integrating construct in both Joint Vision 2020 and the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review and is codified in both the 2000 National Security Strategy (NSS) and the 1997 National Military Strategy (NMS) Yet the services still have no comprehensive definition of information operations (which provides for information superiority) and in fact, offer transposed definitions of Information Warfare (IW), Information Operations (10), and Command and Control Warfare (C2W). This confusion precludes effective development of doctrine, training and unity of effort. This paper uses the objective construct of a Mission Needs Statement to discipline the following question: "Does the past embodiment, current instantiation and continued acceleration of the weaponization of information support its emergence as a separate service, co-equal with its sister services, and if so, what elements from those services should be incorporated into a single service construct?" Its main goal is to offer an alternative construct to the historical Western prescription of kinetic, force-on-force enemy contact, inculcated in American doctrine and culture, to best prepare for both the ongoing conflict and the next war. The research concludes that a separate service can best focus limited resources and provide true systems-of-systems (SoS) engineering, developed a priori as proper architectural constructs, and will best meet the economic, military, and political needs of a future multi-dimensional war, It will show a separate service will likewise best support national security objectives by exploiting the inherent synergy between C4ISR, information operations, information-in-warfare, space operations, and electronic warfare, The research concludes by offering a strawman construct on the structure of such an Information Service,