Mission Command in the Information Age: A Normal Accidents Perspective on Networked Military Operations

Theory on the use of information technology in military operations assumes that bringing together units in an information network helps units to work together. Decentralized command systems such as mission command have been proposed for these networks, so that units can adapt to changes in their turbulent working environments. Others have proposed centralized command systems that permit higher organizational levels to closely direct military operations. This article uses Perrow’s (1984, 1999) Normal Accidents Theory to propose that increasing interdependencies between units in information networks places incompatible demands on the design of networked military operations. It is concluded that networked military operations require decentralized command approaches, but only under the condition that interdependencies between modules of networked units are weak rather than tight. This precondition is essential for retaining control over networked military operations.     

War’s Horizon: Soldier-Led Adaptation in Iraq and Vietnam

Wartime adaptation is a process of adjustment from the war you planned for to the one you have. This process of adjustment is done, in part, by the practitioners of war in the theater of conflict–soldier-led adaptation. Drawing upon two case studies of gun truck development in Iraq and Vietnam I argue that soldiers created networks in order to adapt to battlefield challenges and that the pattern of those networks carries implications for the likelihood of formal adoption by the organization. Simply put, the pattern of the flow of ideas, resources, and skills across the battlefield may affect the likelihood of bottom-up adaptation.     

Space,the New Domain: Space Operations and Chinese Military Reforms

ABSTRACT

The Chinese military has embarked on a series of organizational and doctrinal reforms intended to better enable it to fight modern war. Prominent among these reforms is the growing emphasis on space to enable long-range precisions strikes and on counterspace to deny space capabilities to an adversary. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has officially designated space as a new domain and established an organization to command space forces. With this increased focus on space, the PLA may begin to develop a doctrine to govern the use of space in military operations. The higher priority given to space, especially space control, by the PLA coincides with similar actions by the US military, increasing the possibility of warfare in space and the risks of escalation.     

Reclaiming the Party’s Control of the Gun: Bringing Civilian Authority Back in China’s Civil-Military Relations

ABSTRACT

Since emerging as China’s top leader following the 18th Party Congress, Xi Jinping has moved swiftly to consolidate his formal authority as Central Military Commission chairman over the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. In redressing the civil-military imbalance wrought by Dengist economic reforms, the commander-in-chief has combined institutional mechanisms with the use of fear to impose authoritative civilian control over the military. This paper proposes that a combination of changes to the Chinese strategic environment has contributed to Xi’s utility of the anti-corruption campaign to purge the regime’s coercive forces of its previous underpinnings, and advances that the war on military malfeasance has given rise to a new set of dynamics in civil-military relations in post-Reform China.     

Guns and butter? Military expenditure and health spending on the eve of the Arab Spring

We examine the validity of the guns-versus-butter hypothesis in the pre-Arab Spring era. Using panel data from 1995 to 2011 – the eve of the Arab uprisings – we find no evidence that increased security needs as measured by the number of domestic terrorist attacks are complemented by increased military spending or more importantly ‘crowd out’ government expenditure on key public goods such as health care. This suggests that both expenditure decisions were determined by other considerations at the government level.