ABSTRACT
To date, thinking and planning for network-based operations has been most advanced in the United States. Technological advances over the past 25 years have enabled the US to begin creating the network that is at the heart of this twentyfi rst century requirement. Despite shrinking defense budgets in the 1990s, the US Department of Defense began to focus on the “transformation” of its forces, pushing towards network-centric warfare (NCW). NCW combined innovative tactics and technologies to give the military a decisive warfi ghting advantage and included linking command and control, communications, and intelligence gathering systems with weapons systems in an interconnected grid. America’s military has demonstrated this increasingly networked, global capability in the fi rst Gulf War, the Balkans and, more recently, in combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
