CHINESE INTELLIGENCE-RELATED DOCUMENTS

This paper was excerpted from articles in Liberation Army Daily, June 13 and June 20, 1995. The authors work at the Academy of Military Science, Beijing.

While the military officials of all countries have not yet defined information warfare (IW) authoritatively, military experts in many countries have delimited its implications. While such definitions may be imperfect and even somewhat biased, they are certainly of great benefit to our understanding of the innate features of information warfare.

In Army magazine (1994), Lieutenant General Cerjan, former U.S. National Defense University President, notes, "Information warfare is a means of armed struggle aimed at seizing the decisive military superiority and focused on the control and use of information." General Sullivan, U.S. Army Chief of Staff, holds that "information is the most crucial combat effectiveness," with the essentials of "battlefield information warfare" being to "collect, process, and use enemy information, and to keep the enemy from acquiring and using our information." A U.S. combat theory analyst sums up the substance of information warfare in six points:

• To obtain intelligence on enemy military, political, economic, and cultural "targets," and to keep the enemy from acquiring intelligence on one's own similar "objectives."
• To destroy or jam the enemy's C3I system, and to protect one's own C3I system.
• To ensure our use of outer space information and to keep the enemy from using space information.
• To establish a comprehensive data processing system that covers everything from sensing to firing.
• To establish a mobile and flexible information and intelligence data base.
• To use simulated means to help commanders make decisions.
• Chinese experts who are studying high-tech warfare have also defined information warfare thusly:

We hold that information warfare has both narrow and broad meanings. Information warfare in the narrow sense refers to the U.S. military's so-called "battlefield information warfare," the crux of which is "command and control warfare." It is defined as the comprehensive use, with intelligence support, of military deception, operational secrecy, psychological warfare, electronic warfare, and substantive destruction to assault the enemy's whole information system including personnel; and to disrupt the enemy's information flow, in order to impact, weaken, and destroy the enemy's command and control capability, while keeping one's own command and control capability from being affected by similar enemy actions.

The essential substance of information warfare in the narrow sense is made up of five major elements and two general areas. The five major elements are:

• Substantive destruction, the use of hard weapons to destroy enemy headquarters, command posts, and command and control (C2) information centers
• Electronic warfare, the use of electronic means of jamming or the use of antiradiation [electromagnetic] weapons to attack enemy information and intelligence collection systems such as communications and radar
• Military deception, the use of operations such as tactical feints [simulated attacks] to shield or deceive enemy intelligence collection systems
• Operational secrecy, the use of all means to maintain secrecy and keep the enemy from collecting intelligence on our operations
• Psychological warfare, the use of TV, radio, and leaflets to undermine the enemy's military morale.

Information offense means attacking enemy information systems. Its aims are: destroying or jamming enemy information sources, to undermine or weaken enemy C&C capability, and cutting off the enemy's whole operational system. The key targets of information offense are the enemy's combat command, control and coordination, intelligence, and global information systems. A successful information offensive requires three prerequisites: 1) the capability to understand the enemy's information systems, and the establishment of a corresponding database system; 2) diverse and effective means of attack; and 3) the capability to make battle damage assessments [BDA] of attacked targets.

Information warfare in the broad sense refers to warfare dominated by information in which digitized units use information [smart] equipment. While warfare has always been tied to information, it is only when warfare is dominated by information that it becomes authentic information warfare. Information warfare in the broad sense has many manifestations, as follows:

• Computer virus warfare. Sharven [as translated] claims that: While the major 20th century weapons were tanks, the key 21st century weapon will be the computer. In future wars, operations against military computers will become a key type of information warfare. That will mean computer virus warfare. Computer viruses are special software programs that can alter or destroy a computer's normal operating programs. They are characterized by detection difficulty, rapid contagion, longstanding latency, and active and continuous encroachment, and can severely disrupt the C3I system, smart weapons, and combat potential. Some countries are now considering the organization and establishment of computer virus warfare platoons.
• Precision warfare. The advent of smart weapons was bound to cause the appearance of precision warfare. Precision warfare means precision in reconnaissance (spying) and advance warning, in information transmission, in command coordination, in mobile positioning, in target strikes, and in damage extent. Precision warfare is characterized by less destruction and fewer casualties, less "combat fog" and fewer troops, less logistics support, and better troop mobility.
• Stealth warfare. Stealth aircraft, ships, tanks, and missiles will flood future battlefields. In future wars, as target detection will mean immediate elimination, future warfare will be a confrontation between the "stealthy" and the "detectors." So stealth and counter stealth warfare will not only arrive in the battle arena as an independent and crucial type of warfare, but will also be conducted very intensely.

• Battlefield transparency. While "battlefield fog" used to be a major problem troubling battlefield commanders, with digitized units, the battlefield is transparent. All belligerent troops will have the battlefield situation at their fingertips both day and night, and be able to see clearly on computer terminal display screens both their own and the enemy's positions, postures, concentrations, and movements. Sullivan says that the transparency of coming wars will be "a quantitative step higher than in the Gulf War."
• Battlefield transparency will be the result of digitized technology. Digitized technology can transmit battlefield intelligence to commanders quickly and accurately in a noiseless and graphics-plus-words form. Digitized cameras on reconnaissance planes can send, in 30 seconds, a 24-power photo that was shot in the morning to an operational command center as far as 315 km away. Frontline troops using digitized infrared sights can detect maneuvers by over 100 enemy tanks, immediately reporting them to their superiors with digitized information equipment. Digital compression technology can determine enemy detection distance, raising information processing capability, and transmitting intelligence in real time to all units (subunits), even to individual soldiers, for joint information sharing.
• Overall coordination. Overall coordination is another feature of information warfare. The building of the battlefield information superhighway will mean that all operational systems such as combat forces, combat support units, and combat logistics support units, as well as all operational functions such as battlefield intelligence, command, control, communications, and assaults, will be linked into an organic whole. Coordinated actions by all units of this whole can raise combat effectiveness. For instance, coordinated firepower can raise fire assault effectiveness. Air and land sensors detect enemy target activity, which is immediately displayed on screens at the support arm operational center, with the target positioning system accurately converting enemy target coordinates; the target assignment system then assigns suitable targets to the weapons-launching platforms (such as cannons, helicopters, and tanks) that are most suited to attack.
• Operations in real time. Real time is defined as the time of dealing with a certain event being almost the same as the real time of the occurrence of the event. Real-time operations mean immediate responses to all events that occur on the battlefield between ourselves and the enemy and involves the taking of countermeasures such as timely target detection, timely command, timely mobility, real-time strikes, and real-time support. The advantage of this is that missions that used to be hours or even longer can now be completed in minutes or even seconds, making decisionmaking and the course of battle nearly simultaneous.
• Precision strike. Long-range precision strikes without collateral damage will become the essential fire-assault form of future information warfare, making carpet bombing and area fire part of history. Future warfare will be as accurate, clean, and neat as a scalpel cutting out a brain tumor, because future wars will use smart weapons on a large scale. Such weapons include guided bombs, guided shells, guided shrapnel, cruise missiles, no-tip guided missiles, and antiradiation missiles. Their sensors will be capable of capturing all useable direct or indirect target information, such as sound waves, electric waves, visible light, infrared waves, lasers, and even odors and gasses, which information computers will be able to differentiate and analyze. Such smart ammunition not only can hit targets 100 percent of the time, but can also hit predetermined target positions. To conduct and win information warfare, two major supports will be needed.

This picture is dynamic, changing with the movements of both combatants and changes in terrain and weather. A digitized battlefield is a prerequisite for information warfare. The establishment of a digitized battlefield has many advantages. For instance, information sharing clarifies the position of the enemy and one's own units, sharply lowering accidental injuries; it enables battlefield commanders to amass key units at crucial sites at critical times; it can effectively coordinate short-distance, in-depth, and rear operations, providing intelligence support for all-out, in-depth, simultaneous offensive operations. As all come to know the battlefield conditions, subordinate commanders can bring their initiative into play, acting promptly at their own discretion in line with their superiors' intentions; it makes logistics support "very accurate," for such activities as material provision variety and quantity "accuracy," logistics support provision-time "accuracy," and wounded treatment "timely accuracy."

The establishment of a digitized battlefield is a sort of systems engineering. Many U.S. military specialists claim that this project is more challenging than the Manhattan Project. To carry out this project, the United States is taking many steps.

In line with Clinton's Presidential Order #29 issued in September 1994, the U.S. Defense Department has set up the National Security Policy Commission and the National Information System Security Commission. The former is charged with formulating military security policy and digitized battlefield establishment principles, while the latter is responsible for controlling the security and secrecy of classified and sensitive information on the military information superhighway and the digitized battlefield. The U.S. Army set up in January 1994 the Army Digitized Special Taskforce under the direct leadership of the Army's first deputy chief of staff. In June 1994, that taskforce was expanded into the Army Digitized Office, and charged with the design and establishment of the digitized army battlefield. In July 1994, the U.S. Navy set up the Theater of Operations Information Warfare Center; in January 1995, it established the Fleet Information Warfare Center. Their joint responsibilities are to study and design the technology and software needed for the digitized naval battlefield. The U.S. Air Force Information Warfare Center was set up in October 1993, and charged with establishing a digitized air battlefield.

To build a digitized land, sea, and air battlefield, the computer system structures, operating programs, program design languages, software applications, database languages, and communications rules of all information systems must be standardized and interchangeable throughout all branches of the military. Thus the U.S. military is now pursuing two information resource standardization plans: 1) the all-service command, control, communications, computer, and intelligence system standardization plan, which will set up a global military information database and a global joint network system, thus deploying throughout the world global information sharing for the U.S. military; and 2) the defense information control standardization plan, which is aimed at upgrading the interchangeable software technology of all Defense Department information systems, to eventually make information control and usage standardized and interchangeable.

To achieve battlefield digitization for all arms of the service, the U.S. military is now pursuing a diversified C&C digitized joint-network plan. For instance, the U.S. Army has seven plans:

• The "composite unit C&C, a high-tech demonstration" plan aimed at improving and developing the computer assisted C&C system
• The "joint ground station" plan to provide rapid operational intelligence information to brigade commanders
• The "global network grid" plan to bring many combat units into a single working network
• The "survival adaptation system demonstration" plan that uses multi-media technology to transmit information such as voice, graphics, and data to combat troops
• The "21st century ground warrior" plan to achieve a free battlefield dialogue between man and machine
• The "brigade and below unit (subunit) C&C plan" to provide battlefield information to units (subunits) at the brigade level and below
• The "battlefield combat friend and foe recognition demonstration" plan.

An informationized army is a brand-new "information-based" military category, with its combat theory, system establishment, personnel quality, and weaponry being completely suited to IW needs. The U.S. informationized military establishment plans are in two stages, which are estimated to be completed by the mid-21st century.

In the first stage, the U.S. Army will first be digitized. While digitized units will be essentially the same in authorized strength and structure as units with ordinary equipment, they will be units with digitized communications technology; integrated command, control, communications, and intelligence; smart weaponry; and networking of all operating systems. The major signs that a unit is digitized will be that its main outfits will be equipped with digitized communications equipment, second-generation forward-looking radar, identification friend-and-foe [IFF] equipment, and the global positioning system [GPS]. Such equipment will include M1A2 tanks, M2A2 fire support vehicles, M2A3 fighting vehicles, Black Eagle command helicopters, Apache attack choppers, Kiowa Brave reconnaissance choppers, M109A6 Warrior self-propelled guns, and M106A2 mortars. The U.S. Army now has a digitized battalion and will have established a digitized army by 1999, with all Army units digitized by 2010.

To test the combat capability of digitized units, the U.S. Army has conducted repeated simulated tests and live-troop confrontation exercises between digitized task forces and nondigitized units. The simulated tests show that digitized technology can shorten the time of choppers going into action from 26 minutes to 18 minutes, while raising the hit rate of antitank missiles from 55 percent to 90 percent. The live-troop exercises show that using conventional communications means to send on-site reports to battalion headquarters takes 9 minutes, while digitized communications means takes only 5 minutes; that the repetition rate is 30 percent for (telegram) text sent by conventional means, but only 4 percent for that sent by digitized means; and that the completion rate of on-site reports is only 22 percent by phone, but as high as 98 percent by digitized means. Through repeated demonstrations the U.S. Army has reached the initial conclusion that "digitized units have enormous combat potential," with their combat effectiveness being "about three times that of ordinary units."

In the second stage, the U.S. Army will grow more informationized on that digitized foundation, as well as build the entire U.S. military, including the Navy and Air Force, into a fully informationized force. After 2010, the U.S. Army will probably be the first to draw up "IW theory," as well as act in line with that theory to reform its system establishment, carry out military training, and develop weaponry, to informationize its units. For two reasons this will probably take about three decades, with completion by 2040:

• The shortage of money for military expenditures dictates that, only once its key combat equipment is digitized, can its related combat support and combat logistics support equipment be gradually digitized. Also, it will have to develop a batch of new smart weapons. So projected from an arms development cycle of about 15 years, it is estimated that its equipment will be completely informationized by 2030.
• The conversion of a military establishment from one structure to another that can operate effectively will take roughly two decades. The U.S. military that can begin to adjust its troop structure after 2010 will still need around two decades to establish the mechanisms suited to fight an information war. Also, as weaponry informationization and military establishment reform cannot be completely synchronous, with an approximate time lag of at least a decade, it is projected that the U.S. Army will be fully informationized only by 2040. The U.S. Navy and Air Force are now also informationizing. By about 2040, once all services are informationized, it will still take more than a decade to get the entire military into a digitized joint network. So it is obvious that by mid-century, the United States probably will have built the world's first completely smart military.

• It will make the rivalry over "information dominance" particularly intense. Certain experts note, "information dominance can be defined most easily and accurately as knowing all enemy information, while keeping the enemy from learning one's own." In future wars, most participating troops in most situations will be dealing not with material, but rather with information. The formation and development of troop combat effectiveness will rely mainly on information collection, processing, transmission, control, and usage. A superior force that loses "information dominance" will be passive, beaten, and in trouble, while an inferior one that seizes the information advantage will be able to win the battlefield initiative. As future combat actions will all be dependent and focused on information, the struggle to wrest information dominance will permeate everything and will be exceptionally fierce and intense.
• It will expand the implications of warfare. This will be manifested mainly in two areas. 1) It will make it harder to win wars. In the agricultural age, it was necessary only to exterminate the enemy's armed forces to win the war. In the industrial age, in addition to wiping out the enemy country's military, it has also been necessary to destroy its military-industrial base. However, in the information age, it will be necessary not only to eliminate the enemy country's war making "material base," but also to control and destroy the enemy's information systems, which will be the primary assault targets. 2) It will expand the limits of war into outer space. That is because the key IW systems space monitoring, positioning, guidance, and communications systems will all be deployed there.
• It will shorten the time of battle. The institution of IW will shorten future wars for two reasons: 1) On one hand, attack means will be highly precise, with the strike targets also being key enemy military positions such as "brain centers," which can be forced to submit very quickly. 2) On the other, in the information age as compared to the industrial age, the combat objectives pursued by both belligerents will be more limited, not total surrender or extermination of the other side, but rather limited political objectives.
• It will make combat more integrated. As information will flow more quickly and not be subject to service branch or time-space limitations, future wars are going to be unprecedentedly integrated.
-Land, sea, air, and space warfare will be highly integrated, which will be the case not only in large-scale wars, but also in small-scale armed conflicts. - The combat lines among service arms will be hard to distinguish. For instance, the weapons that destroy enemy tanks may not be one's own [friendly] tanks, but rather smart missiles fired from friendly naval submarines. -War zone combat operations will be integrated. As information-age units will have real-time information for rapid mobility both day and night, "the decentralized campaigns developed in the industrial age will no longer exist, being replaced by integrated combat operations in the entire theater of operations." -The lines among the strategic, campaign, and tactical levels will be blurred. As smart weapons will provide effective means of meeting combat objectives, it will be possible at times to meet strategic and campaign objectives without losing large units.
• It will change the substance of force concentrations. As the use of precision-strike and stealth weapons will make it possible for force concentrations to meet campaign and even strategic objectives, the force-concentration priority will change from the tactical to the campaign and strategic level. A concentration of mostly personnel will change to a concentration of mainly firepower and information, and a concentration of mostly troop and weapons quantity will change to mainly quality. Force concentrations will occur faster, more precisely, and more often during operations.

Alvin Toffler noted recently that in the information age, "as the winning of wars will rely on military quality, not quantity, the military will shrink in size." Therefore IW in a certain sense is "precision warfare," with objectives achievable without using large amounts of troops or arms.

The military makeup will change. To adapt to IW needs, changes in military makeup will experience the following trends: In the balance of army, naval and air force might, the ratio of army troops will decline, while that of naval and air force troops will grow; in support units, technical support will grow, while logistics support will decline; in the officer-to-men ration, there will be more officers and less men; in the officer makeup, there will be more technical officers and less commanding and ordinary staff officers. Also, there are likely to be new service arms such as a space force and computer soldiers.

The unit establishment will tend to be smaller, more integrated, and more multifunctional. While Western nations have not yet determined the IW unit establishment, they hold that these units will have the following features: "The best combination of men and machines," with quality personnel and high-tech arms both being as efficient as possible; flexible mobility suited to command, control, and information flow; light equipment that is easy to deploy; high combat effectiveness, fewer command levels, multifunctional commanders, and crack commanding organs.

There are two implications for smaller units. 1) Unit might at all levels will be smaller. For instance, U.S. Army divisions will be cut from 18,000 to 12,000 troops each, with British and French Army divisions likely to be reduced from 12,000 to under 10,000 troops each; 2) The status and role of units at all levels will be obviously higher. For instance, the U.S. military plans to raise the role of the army in campaign planning to the group army level, replacing the division with the brigade as the basic tactical operations unit equipped with all sorts of combat and support platoons. The Russian military is also planning to institute an "army brigade system." The factors in the appearance of such a situation include higher-quality officers and men, weaponry advances, and robot-equipped units.

Unit integration means that composite units will reach new heights, with a transition from composite service arms to composite armed forces. For instance, the U.S. military is considering the establishment of two units, one being a composite army-air force unit the "flying tank" or "air mechanized unit," and the other a land, sea and air "joint task force." This latter unit will be made up of an army brigade task force, an air force fighter squadron, a naval fleet unit, and a marine expedition platoon, suited to countering low-force conflicts and breakouts overseas.

Multifunctional units will mean that units at all levels will have to fulfill diverse combat missions in wars on all combat terms and all degrees of force, including "noncombat operations." Meanwhile, army, navy, and air force combat units are also likely to break the traditional service arm operating limits, and perform the combat operations of other service arms. For instance, land units will fight naval and air battles, with naval and air force units fighting land battles. Therefore, some Western military experts predict that as units diversify, unit establishment categories will decrease.

• Terminating and adjusting preset unit development projects and purchase plans. For instance, the United States has eliminated over 150 arms production plans, and delayed over 20 equipment purchase plans; Germany has eliminated and postponed over 40 arms purchase plans.
• Increasing their research input. In the past decade, the defense research outlays of Japan, the United States, France, and Germany have increased, respectively, by 120 percent, 67 percent, 66 percent, and 56 percent. Most of this outlay is going to develop the "crucial technologies" of smart ammunition, smart weapons platforms, and the C3I system.
• Upgrading their existing weapons. While the Western nations are slowing their rate of production of new weapons, they are paying more attention to the use of electronic information technology to modernize and upgrade their existing equipment. For instance, the U.S. Air force is planning to upgrade its B-52 bombers by outfitting them with high-tech systems such as new radar, global positioning systems, and cruise missile launching units, to keep them in service until the year 2000.

Chinese Views of Future Warfare
[National Defense University Press, 1996]