This book is a chronology of how naval command and control (C2) systems evolved over the last 100 years in response to changing technologies and threat environments. It focuses especially on the U.S. Navy, but includes discussions of foreign naval developments as well. It is an indispensable book to understand how the U.S. Navy's conception of `command and decision' (CD), the navy's version of C2, led incrementally to the current CD system sometimes called Network Centric Warfare (NSW), but which Friedman prefers to call `picture centric warfare'. As Friedman makes clear NSW is only the latest iteration of a continually evolving concept. Friedman has identified three phases that mark the evolution CD systems: the radio phase; the radar phase; and the computer phase.
The first phase is what he calls the [wireless] radio phase. This began in the first ten years of the 20th Century, when First Sea Lord, Sir John Fisher (of Dreadnaught fame) determined that the most economical way to deal with the problems facing the Royal Navy was to introduce what today would be called a centralized C2 system based on ocean surveillance, wireless communications, signals intelligence and what today are called flag plots (i.e. ship locations). Fisher then proposed to use the information produced by this system to vector ships against enemy naval threats. WWI (1914-1918) saw Fisher's concept tested and proven. Fisher essentially created the first command, control, communications , intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C3ISR) system concept on which all future developments were based.
The U.S. Navy took the lead in Friedman's radar phase which really began in WWII and lasted through the Cold War. The takeaway in this phase is that the exponential growth of information from an increasing number of multiple sources, made information management more and more difficult. This period saw the development of the ship borne Combat Information Center (CIC) as a means of coping with information overloads.
In his third phase Friedman notes that computer based innovations, (e.g. Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS)) have provided at least a temporary solution to information management. And that there is a good reason why NCW, the latest CD iteration, is called an information driven concept.
This is an excellent book that fortunately includes a list acronyms that is indispensable for following Friedman's sometimes dense prose.
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