ABSTRACT
During the past ten years, the Russian military has attentively studied the subject of information war (IW). The main catalyst for this interest was the successful use of IW by coalition forces during Operation Desert Storm. Russian military theorists watched coalition planes bomb Iraqi targets in real time with precision and understood that warfare had entered a new phase, one dominated by information-based equipment and resources. Two further motivators were the poor use of IW by the Russian armed forces during the First Russian-Chechen War (1994-96), which contributed to the loss of Russian morale, and the successful use of IW by NATO during the conflict over Kosovo.
