The Revolution in Military Affairs 2.0: Information Dominance and the Democratization of Information Technology

The goal of transforming legacy, industrial age military organizations to agile, responsive information age forces has eluded many of the world´s defense organizations. Even in countries with large defense budgets, the perception of associated time and expense has often frustrated modernization efforts. As a result, military forces continue to operate in a manner emphasizing decomposition, specialization, hierarchical organization, process optimization, deconfliction, centralized planning/ decentralized execution and to organize in a manner that creates capability and information silos and promotes the acquisition of non-interoperable combat and information systems. All of this results in forces that are progressively less capable of addressing 21st century security requirements. This paper describes information technology´s (IT) role in transforming industrial age forces to information age forces that push power to the edge and promoting self-synchronization.