Winning-and Losing-the First Wired War

Blind Spots and Incompatible Systems

Feldmayer radios the tank at the rear of his patrol and orders it to the front of the convoy. It's the latest M1A2 Abrams, one of the most advanced tanks in the world, equipped with new night-vision sensors, thicker armor and BFT's older (and, counterintuitively) more feature-packed cousin: Force XXI Battle Command Brigade-and-Below, or FBCB2. First built in the early 1990s for Cold War-style conflicts, where armies are tightly bunched together, FBCB2 relies on a classified radio band to communicate. BFT, designed later for more-dispersed, unconventional warfare, uses more-open satellite transmissions; troops can share information at greater distances, but they can't get the kind of secrecy that FBCB2 provides. The Army is working on a bridge between the two systems so that they will be able to share some basic information, but for now they are mostly incompatible. Feldmayer won't be able to see where the tank is leading them, and he won't be able to use FBCB2's Instant Messenger-like tool to quickly relay commands. He won't have access to any of the communications links that increase what the Pentagon calls "situational awareness" and that ultimately power network-centric warfare. If the navigation systems were working, every vehicle could split up or speed ahead if an attack came, without getting lost. But today they will all have to follow the tank's taillights in a neat line, just as it was done in 1944.

Charlie Company takes off, racing toward the fight at Ad Duluiyah. Careening around traffic circles, blowing past checkpoints, the company is primed for combat: weapons loaded, 120-millimeter cannon shells rammed into breaches. Radio-frequency jammers form a protective bubble around the convoy, keeping remote-controlled roadside bombs from detonating. "They better have that shit wrapped up by the time we get there," Feldmayer shouts, "or we're going to blow some shit up!"

Then, suddenly, the lead tank
lurches to a halt. Through roiling clouds of dust, illuminated by the tank's headlights, Feldmayer sees a pile of concrete and earth. The lead tank's fancy navigation system has just led them into a roadblock, too tall for the vehicles to climb. A dozen soldiers curse in unison.

By the time Charlie gets to Ad Duluiyah, 45 minutes later, the shooting is over. A dozen Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles line a muddy road leading to a rickety pontoon bridge that's nearly swamped by a surging stream. And all those soldiers' chatter is creating cacophony over the Single Channel Ground and Air Radio System, or Sincgars, the radio system connecting the Army's fleet of helicopters and ground vehicles. It's the buzzing, chirping sound of information overload.

An officer from Alpha Company walks over to explain what's going on. Alpha was following up on leads about a stolen Iraqi police truck when the soldiers spotted a suspiciously large gathering of cars in front of a single house. When Alpha got close, Iraqis spilled out, sprinting for their cars and shooting off tracer rounds. Alpha didn't have enough men to pursue.

Now the idea is to start searching houses, one at a time, for insurgents. Charlie Company is assigned the northwest side of the stream. Feldmayer tells his tank commanders to use their infrared sights to watch over the foot patrols. Taking a last glance at his BFT, eyeballing the digital representation of the dark, foreboding neighborhood he's about to penetrate, Feldmayer mutters, "Don't need this anymore," and switches the system off.

Inspired by Wal-Mart

The Pentagon's pursuit of network-centric warfare began in the info-tech boom of the 1990s-largely influenced by, of all things, Wal-Mart. Ultra-wired retailers like that knew tons about their customers' needs and habits, and their suppliers' capabilities. And that helped the companies become more profitable, with less inventory and fewer employees, than their more-traditional rivals. This kind of "information superiority," Admiral Arthur Cebrowski and Pentagon scientific adviser John Garstka argued in a 1998 issue of the Naval Institute's Proceedings, would allow the military to streamline similarly. Fewer troops could cover wider areas when networked. Tanks and ships could carry less armor and fewer guns, because they would know exactly where their enemies were. Lower-level commanders could make key decisions. Conventional armies wouldn't stand a chance.

The Army's leadership quickly embraced the idea. In 1999 Gen. Eric Shinseki, then Army chief of staff, accelerated an overhaul of the organization, primarily along the network-centric model. Every soldier and every machine would be tapped into a giant, wireless intranet for combat. Presidential candidate George W. Bush embraced the concept too, during the 2000 election. And when Bush entered office, Cebrowski was installed as the director of a new Pentagon department: the Office of Force Transformation.

Then came the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The network wasn't done, but the slices that had been set up-like BFT, which enabled American commanders to see one another's locations-helped to decapitate Saddam's regime almost instantly. Individual troops still had trouble communicating with one another; some Marine squad leaders were forced to use five different radios to share information. In the early days of the Iraq war, it didn't seem to matter.

The gear was clearly saving lives. The number of friendly-fire incidents that plagued U.S. troops during the first Gulf War dropped significantly, for example, thanks to the new, networked equipment. In November 2004, 10,000 marines participated in the assault on Fallujah. With drones watching overhead and commanders communicating better, not one marine was killed by friendly fire. Faith in the new technologies ran so high, the Pentagon decided to cut troop levels in key areas. This part of Iraq was patrolled by 1,200 soldiers in 2004; now, a single battalion -300 troops-covers the same area.