Is Cyber a new warfare? Debate (catch all)

[Erich G. Simmers]

The point about the "OODA" loop is kind of out of left field. The OODA loop is nothing more than another explanatory model for the decision cycle. Decision sciences is filled with them, (SPA- search predict act; IPDE - identify, predict, decide, execute). The 1950s were rife with them as ways of managing risk or industrializing management processes. OODA isn't really anything special just something most military folks understand. So seeing "This isn't an OODA loop" has me fussy.

Yeah, I agree. I'd like to hear more on what he is getting at there.

Until it's in JP 1-02 and explained via a stand alone Joint Pub (e.g. JP 3-12), it would be just another opinion, however well researched.

Right now, JP 1-02 does not even fully recognize cyberspace as a warfighting domain. I just looked at the just released JP 1-02..it ain't in there. However there is a term called "full spectrum superiority" that makes a pretty interesting distinction (emphasis added):

Why wait for the definition to get reified in doctrine? It's not like doctrine will end the debate anyway; did FM3-24 put "COIN" as theory and practice to rest? My interest is in out-of-the-box thinking on that thing (some of which is new, some of which is old as dirt) that people call "cyberwar." DoD shouldn't be held up as the ultimate arbiter here, because frankly they may not have it right. It wouldn't be the first time, would it?

All "asymmetry" means is not taking on an adversary they way that adversary battles you. If you saw the movie "Tin Cup", the protagonist challenges an opponent to a golf round using only garden tools. Was it a "war"? Yes. Was asymmetry applied? Yes. The effects desired were achieved. It could easily be argued that the protagonist entered the contest at equal or greater skill. But rather than contest the ground (so to speak) with traditional "weapons" he used irregular ones.

I don't disagree with this characterization of asymmetry, but what really interests me is how Aitel characterizes cyberwar as less asymmetric then it is popularly conceived. He is challenging the notion that cyberwar, according to Rand and others, is "more asymmetric than most." Here's the quote from Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar (PDF):

Perfectly symmetric warfare does not exist, particularly when the United States is involved. Yet cyberwarfare may be asymmetric than most. The U.S. economy and society are heavily networked; so is its military. The attacker, by contrast, may have no targets of consequence, either because it is not particularly digitized, because its digital assets are not networked to the outside world, or because such assets are not terribly important to its government.

I don't know if I agree with Aitel's view or Libicki's. Are you saying that both Aitel and Libicki have it wrong here? Are you saying something different entirely?

It seems like most people agree with #2 and #3 as being fallacies, but they don't agree with #1.