Effects-Based Information Operations : Some Observations 1

Information Operations (IO) has become a primary war-fighting capability and is now considered a military core competency. The military Services are establishing IO as a military career field equivalent to other war fighting fields. Transforming doctrine into an operational reality has, however, proven to be a challenge and the training programs and operational planning and assessment tools have been slow to materialize. Components of the Department of Defense (DoD) have been exploring the means for incorporating effects based thinking into their IO planning, execution, and assessment activities of the command and control process and the research and development (R&D) community have developed some effects based tools that support the development of analytical models that relate IO actions to effects. Researchers from George Mason University (GMU) have used some of these tools in several war games and have evolved new modeling techniques and uses for these tools. This paper explores some of the challenges of executing and assessing effects based IO courses of action. The authors believe that the lessons learned from the war gaming experience can provide guidance to the further development of tools to support effects based operations, the procedures for incorporating these effects-based IO concepts into the command and control 1 This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under grant No. N00014-00-1-0267 and by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grant No. F49620-02-1-0332 228 THE CORNWALLIS GROUP VIII: ANALYSIS FOR GOVERNANCE AND STABILITY processes, and provide examples to support the education of the forces in effects based IO thinking.