5 Challenges to Information Superiority

From defending U.S. interests abroad, to deterring nuclear attacks against the homeland, the 2018 National Defense Strategy asserts that information superiority is key to the U.S. military’s ability to prepare for and win in war. But in this modern era, when thousands of communications satellites circle the globe and even non-state adversaries can obtain cutting-edge weapons and technology, information has grown easier than ever to obtain.

What differentiates information superiority from information mediocrity lies increasingly in the transmission speed and quality of data, rather than the data itself. Those who attain superior information—and act on it the fastest—will win. Those who lack it, or who lack the ability to transmit it faster than their adversaries, will lose. 

How can the U.S. military ensure the information superiority necessary to achieve overmatch against the nation’s adversaries? Exploring the critical challenges to achieving information superiority will help defense leaders better address this important question.

5 Key Challenges to Attaining Information Superiority

1. Data Transmission Relies on Central Networks.

An early leader in network capabilities, the U.S. military is still largely reliant on centralized networks for the transmission and processing of its ever-growing collection of data. Myriad sensors must send their data back to distant servers for collection and processing; secure communications must travel across the globe on pre-established routes to convey critical updates; and raw data must travel through often-centralized applications before onward transmission to the warfighters who need it most. 

These network-reliant processes have created absolute dependence on a chain of uninterrupted data availability and exchange. This dependency makes the information chain vulnerable to both physical and cyber attacks, as well as simple failure or technical errors. If the information chain is broken, or even sufficiently delayed, then information superiority is lost. 

2. Systems Can’t Talk to Each Other.

In our current information age, many Americans enjoy ubiquitous data interchanges in their everyday lives: in traffic apps, news aggregators, and more. But for many warfighters, data is limited by systems that don’t interconnect or easily communicate with each other. To achieve information superiority and provide warfighters with the best possible situational awareness, the military’s many separate systems will need to work together, seamlessly and in real time. 

While some networking of weapon systems has been achieved, it’s only been with great difficulty and cost. It’s not enough to have “intra” connectedness—within, say, one service or technical ecosystem. To operate as a global, joint force, the military’s many systems must have a way to communicate and interoperate among themselves, and sometimes even with the systems of foreign partners. 

3. The Military Doesn’t Own Its Designs.

What good is having the most advanced technology if it cannot be modified or changed to meet emerging threats? U.S. service members are currently grappling with this question due to the closed design practices of many original equipment manufacturers. While feature-rich, many proprietary systems and application programming interfaces are difficult and expensive for military buyers to adapt to new requirements and changing threats. 

This slows down the warfighter’s ability to leverage weapons and technology in battle, and could seriously interfere with information gathering, processing, and transmitting functionality. It could even put troops in danger by leaving them with unusable tools and equipment on the battlefield. 

4. Acquisition Processes Need to Be Modernized.

Even as the military incorporates more and more technology into weapons and platforms, its method of procurement remains outdated. Traditional buying practices focus on discrete systems and hardware, often emphasize a low tolerance for risk, and do not focus on acquiring to solve the information challenge. 

Lengthy, complicated procurements often demand planning years in advance of military purchases—hobbling the ability of designers and builders to innovate in real time. While procurement methods that are elaborately planned and meticulously structured may work well for military purchases centered on amassing hardware platforms like ships, aircraft, and tanks, they’re too slow and too rigid for the pace of modern innovation. 

5. Warfighters Face TMI – Too Much Information.

With thousands of new sensors being fielded by each of the services, and petabytes upon petabytes of data flooding its computers and networks, TMI is no longer just internet slang—it’s a reality for many warfighters. It is practically impossible to handle the explosion of information that devices and sensors produce on the modern battlefield, and the rate of incoming data will only grow.

Revolutionary thinking on how to leverage technology in the orienting and deciding steps of the observe–orient–decide–act (OODA) loop is critical to ensuring that the U.S. does not simply have the most information, but the best information. Without urgent, creative thinking on how to implement artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) into information processing, the military’s objective of gaining and maintaining information superiority will be crushed by the volume of the very information it seeks to leverage.

Warfighter Readiness in the Digital Battlespace

While these challenges to information superiority are great, they’re not insurmountable. Simply identifying the problem is the first step on the road to fixing it. Defense leaders can leverage the creativity and experience of trusted partners and technology providers to decentralize networks, improve joint all-domain communications and interoperability, gain ownership and control of intellectual property and designs used by the military, and leverage AI and ML to ensure that warfighters get only the right information at the right time. All the while, they can work with civilian leadership to modernize outdated acquisition processes. In pinpointing the challenges, defense leaders can increase warfighter readiness and outpace the threat—providing information superiority to keep warfighters out of harm’s way while maximizing lethal effects on the nation’s adversaries.