To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

--"Art of War" by Sun Tzu

As in business, technology has been a mere enabler in fulfilling the fundamental objectives in military warfare. The underlying concepts and strategies for a successful warfare have remain the same. The world's oldest military treatise "Art of War" that was written by Sun Tzu (Sun Zi or known as Master Sun) almost more than 2000 years ago is still revered and often referenced by the thinkers and experts of today.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.
- Sun Tzu

What Sun Tzu wrote 2 millenniums ago is an intelligent text of all the knowledge areas that a general needs to know about in war - knowledge of his people and various capabilities, knowledge about his enemy, knowledge about the battlefield, knowledge about the surrounding conditions like the weather, time, season and knowledge about the maneuvers and strategies he needs to employ to win.

Each war is becoming more knowledge based than the last! Information and knowledge management systems used in todays warfare strive to provide the army with as much accurate and fast information of the above knowledge areas as possible. The key is to improve the situational awareness or common operational knowledge that a fleet or an army has regards its position and status in the battlefield. All levels of the army should have a common platform of understanding and information on which decisions are taken and interpreted leading to a collective and joint effort. Examples of advancements in technology that are used in todays warfare to achieve objectives as above include technologies from as basic as the GPS (Global Positioning System) for efficient data mapping and position determining, to US Navy's Cooperative Engagement Capability for battleships to help each other track surface missiles, Digitized Terrain Elevation Data systems that scopes the vertical profile of a terrain to help the troops know it before they actually encounter it and a wholly coordinated computer network that shares information between the troops, commanding officers and also guides weapons to targets.

The speed at which information gathered at various points in war and the accuracy of the information pieces are two factors extremely critical for success.
For an aircraft that's fighting in the war field it is very critical for it to know how far or near the nearest the target is from the attacker ...more so if it happens to be the target itself!
It has all but a matter of seconds to know the altitude and position of the enemy aircraft to aim and hit it... or when its radar systems show that its in the line of attack. Information has to be accurate. The fighter may only see some pieces of data on his screen showing unidentified objects. The systems have to be intelligent enough to to tell him whether the object it is hitting is a mere topographical feature or an aircraft - in which case whether its an enemy or a friend ...or worse a passenger aircraft.

Similarly the speed and accuracy of the weaponry used in warfare helps in making an accurate hit on the target area without losing much ammunition. In earlier wars, weapons used by armies usually had a wide tolerance levels in hitting the targets because of which more ammunition was spent till the target was hit. The Gulf war in 1991 and the recent Iraq war had weapons armed with GPS technologies and were able enough to hit the target accurately within 30 to 50 feet as against earlier weapons that were accurate to hundreds of feet.

Extensive use of modern technology and warfare strategies have provided the battlefield with distinct implications in different areas:

Its all in the mind:

The knowledge based warfare is making war more of a mind game than one played on the battlefield. Superior information systems and technologies are able to give a good picture of the whole battlefield and forces on both the sides to army generals and majors to help them plan effective on field strategies and inform the troops in real time. This increases the scope of implementing dynamic warfare strategies on the battlefield. Also more information has actually resulted in less 'face to face' encounters and still more accurate attacks. Armies are now able to penetrate their vision far into the enemy lines and hit far into the enemy lines and result in less frontal assault.

In the latest US Iraq war, the US army employed similar tactics by using more knowledge and information systems in war and limiting the use of conventional wisdom that stresses on excessive number of troops to create the impact.

Increased common situational awareness:

High tech systems are able to provide information to the soldiers about the exact position of their tanks or aircrafts in their battle lines and also the position of enemy lines. The systems that bring this information do throughout the troops planted in different places in real time. This increases the 'situational awareness' of the army and commands and orders can executed on a common operational platform.

More agility:

Information systems help armies become more agile and supple. Making quick decisions on the battlefield while carrying heavy loads of ammunition and supplies weighing upto 50 lbs and fighting in low visibility areas or often in the dark (or a sandstorm) isn't exactly interesting for the troops. Technological advancements help locate enemies and their bases with precision so that the soldiers can shoot enemy ships by relying on information on their PDA screens and not strain their eyes and luck!

Less friendly fires:

One of the most unfortunate ways to lose battleships and men in war is by friendly fires. Friendly fires are when troops shoot down men and battleships of their own by oversight. It is often difficult to ascertain whether the object in sight is a friend or a foe and errors in such cases result in what is known as friendly fire. Superior information systems bring down the number of friendly fires by giving proper information on the details of the army line and its position and that of the enemy as well. The soldiers are thus now in a better position to make a decision.

Deadlier weapons - electromagnetic bombs!

Advancements in technology have enabled armies access to more effective category of weapons - electromagnetic bombs! These weaponry are designed to destroy the enemy's communication lines and technological infrastructure. This cripples the enemy when the generals are not able to communicate with their troops and the armies on the battlefield are left alone and stranded for want of a command.

Double edged sword:

Technology often can be a dangerous weapon against oneself. This was experienced by the US army in the latest war against Iraq when one of its Patriot missiles targeted an aircraft from its allies' camp due to a bug in its software which made it think that the coalition aircraft was actually an Iraqi missile.

Greater use of technology and information dissemination systems are making way for more and more knowledge based warfare. Technology is coming to recognize the information needs of different people in the army hierarchy and providing the tools for them to access this information. The war is now fought as a properly synchronized single team having access to a single database of information than separate groups having different access to different areas (and often different versions) of information. The last couple of wars have seen increase in dependence on information systems advancements and if army generals are to be believed more is yet to come. Warfare strategies in the future are going to be more information centric where defeating an enemy would mean getting as much foreknowledge as possible and using it to cripple the enemy information lines. Sadly however humankind will have to witness more wars to experience the power of information and knowledge in warfare!

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