Knowledge centric operations: Implications to future command and control

Over the past 50 years, the military services have evolved from a platform-centric approach to the emerging network-centric warfare. As we continue to progress in the Information Age, the authors postulate network-centric warfare will evolve into information-centric warfare (some evidence suggests this evolution has already taken place.) This paper proposes the next step in warfare, transitioning from network-centric/information-centric to knowledge-centric warfare. Network-centric warfare is built around human and organizational behavior - a new way of thinking in terms of information linkages. Its end result is combat power that can be generated from effectively linking or networking the warfighting enterprise. Its premise is the ability to push "information to the edge." Once this premise becomes institutionalized, warfare will utilize the proven attributes of network-centric/information centric warfare to go to the next, logical, evolutionary step pushing of "knowledge to the edge". This next step transforms network-centric warfare's "Power to the Edge" to knowledge-centric warfare's "Power of the Edge". This paper discusses the basic tenets of network/information-centric warfare and how its attributes form the basis for knowledge-centric warfare as well as the command and control implications of a knowledge-centric environment. A brief discussion of the required technologies is presented.