ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the idea of net-centric warfare, examining its roots and contemporary manifestations. It describes the debates and critiques surrounding the relevance to the future of network-centric approaches. The chapter explains, it is difficult to know the extent to which the future genuinely is net-centric, because history illustrates that attempts to foretell the future of warfare invariably fails in significant ways. Soviet thinking was influenced by US developments in what were termed ‘Emerging Technologies’ (ET) in areas such as precision-guided munitions (PGMs), stealth, and data acquisition and processing. In the 1990s, Admiral William Owens, the then Vice-Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was one of the early proponents of this view and he coined the term ‘system of systems’ to describe this emerging capability. The historical evidence seems to suggest that, despite their best efforts, armies usually fail to predict correctly the future character of warfare.
