How does the UK military gain Information Advantage in the next war?

General Sir Gordon Messenger claims information advantage is more important than physical platforms. He said that the information capability gap needed the most focus by the UK Military. 

“ Our ability to respond faster through cleverer decision-making which is enabled by the flow of information, is actually frankly as important if not even more important than whether our tanks out-range an anti-tank missile”[1]

The need to win the information war concerns him more than the latest model of tank, fast jet or warship. Yet, if another country sought Information Advantage, what could their military easily achieve?

Three ideas would be: 

Digital Skills; 

Digital Transformation; 

Democratise Information.

Introduce and Assess Digital Skills across the Defence Workforce

A rival nation would introduce Digital Skills to their military. These are essential skills to understand the digital transformation shaping society and are essential for a dynamic economy and business. Lorry drivers dealing with driverless vehicles, doctors using AI for diagnosis or school children learning coding for the future all need these skills. So do our soldiers.

Yet in military circles there is still a certain badge to be digitally illiterate, even people in important digital positions proudly claiming that, “they are the least digital person you could meet”. This must change through simple education and awareness. A great start would be Microsoft’s Digital Skills [2] initiative providing free online training for all ages and experiences. Any military seeking to improve could easily access these essential courses.

An annual assessment of Digital Skills, the same as weapon and fitness tests for all serving personnel, would provide the benchmark of whether a military is truly digital. This should be for all and not just for its technical services.

A rival country may even seek to reward those leaders and soldiers who have developed or grown their digital skills. The question is, if a rival country spent time educating its military and public sector using freely available materials and knowledge, would we see that time as wasted in comparison to our current military activities and time spent on drill or bureaucracy?

Digitally Transform the Defence Business

A rival would next focus on Digital Transformation across its Defence Business. Outside Defence, the business universe is expanding. Every day innovation accelerates, as technology blurs the boundaries between physical products and virtual experiences. Microsoft has helped people and businesses across the globe to digitally transform. Yet the Defence Business still restricts information. It is slow to adopt recent changes. It wastes money on systems that rapidly become obsolete yet has no new funding to replace them. The result is stagnation, not innovation. 

What if a rival military disrupted thinking by moving most of its business onto modern cloud platforms? Shifted its business culture to one of sharing information? Enabled decision makers to make and implement decisions quickly? That rival military would keep its core warfighting secrets very secret. Yet for everything else it would exploit secure and trusted systems for its routine business like management, project delivery and logistics.

The same as every other business on the planet, we must move wholeheartedly away from the “we’re different” to “what can we learn” mind-set that improves delivery of essential capabilities, offers better solutions and, most importantly, saves money. 

Again, what if a military rival digitally transformed most of its business to one like any other business or public sector dealing with personal information and time critical data? Would we look as they turned into more military capability the immense savings in expenditure that they made and claim that we are better off in comparison?

Democratise Information to empower people who own information to use information 

Finally, with a new Digital Skills trained workforce exploiting Digital Transformation, what if that rival military then Democratised Information? Modern businesses have realised that the best people to use information are the people who create and own that information. Placing information into peoples’ hands does not hinder decision making but improves it, by sharing opinions and enabling people to act faster and clearer. The military regularly centralises and controls its information, escalating decisions upwards where the myriad of data sources creates confusion rather than clarity. Empowered people use their local information to avoid unnecessary escalation and prevent information blockages.

What if that same rival military started to trust its people to access and use the information at its fingertips? Local commanders could see their energy use in barracks and act with their people. They could exploit the internet of things that is commercially available at a low price. They could identify opportunities to save money and raise those ideas quickly with supporting evidence. They could identify trends in retention, drawing on information to respond to concerns before people leave the service. Would we see such democratised information making a difference across a rival’s business as a missed opportunity?

We need these initiatives in the core of our defence business.

Military operations may still demand modified solutions to deliver information advantage in battle, yet it is futile expenditure without our core defence business adopting a digital transformation across its entirety. A rival military could easily and quickly introduce the three suggestions made here to gain information advantage over the UK. Yet so could we.

We could train our entire workforce in Digital Skills. We could Digitally Transform our way of doing business. We could quickly Democratise Information. The outcome would be revolutionary.