User Innovation and System Management

This chapter investigates the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC), the analogue to the Fighter Command Ops Room in the modern U.S. Air Force. The air force formally designates the CAOC as a weapon system, even as it is basically just a large office space with hundreds of computer workstations, conference rooms, and display screens. The CAOC is an informational weapon system that coordinates all of the other weapon systems that actually conduct air defense, strategic attack, close air support, air mobility and logistics, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). One might be tempted to describe the CAOC as “a center of calculation,” but modern digital technology tends to decenter information practice. Representations of all the relevant entities and events in a modern air campaign reside in digital data files rather than a central plotting table. The relevant information is fragmented across collection platforms, classified networks, and software systems that are managed by different services and agencies. Thus, in each of the four major U.S. air campaigns from 1991 to 2003, CAOC personnel struggled with information friction. They rarely used the mission planning systems that were produced by defense contractors as planned, and they improvised to address emerging warfighting requirements.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between information technology and military power. Digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information. As a result, military personnel now have to struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy. Local representations of the world must be coordinated with whatever distant reality they represent. When personnel can perceive things that are relevant to their mission, distinguish friend from foe, predict the effects of their operations, and get reliable feedback on the results, then they can fight more effectively. When they cannot do these things, however, then tragedies like friendly fire, civilian deaths, missed opportunities, and other counterproductive actions become more likely. If military organizations are unable to coordinate their representations with reality, then all of their advantages in weaponry or manpower will count for little. The chapter describes the organizational effort to coordinate knowledge and control as information practice. It argues that the quality of practice, and thus military performance, depends on the interaction between strategic problems and organizational solutions.

Irregular Problems and Biased Solutions

This chapter details how the U.S. intervention in Iraq completed a full cycle through the information practice framework between 2003 and 2008. During the invasion and its aftermath, managed practice turned into insulated practice, which prompted both internal and external actors to adapt. During the subsequent occupation, adaptive practice turned into problematic practice, which in turn encouraged the U.S. military to institutionalize doctrinal reforms. The chapter explores the ways in which insulated practice still persisted at the end of this process, curiously enough, even in a tactical unit close to the fight that had ample opportunity to make sense of facts on the ground. It also surveys the Special Operations Task Force's (SOTF) information system and then compares the SOTF to other units that conducted a similar mission (Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC) or operated in the same environment (U.S. Marines) to demonstrate how different institutional choices can generate different qualities of information practice.