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The consequences of infowar will reach down into the ranks. By 2010, the Army hopes to "digitize the battlefield" by linking every soldier and weapons system electronically. A research team led by Motorola and the Army R.-and-D. lab in Natick, Massachusetts, plans to unveil next year a prototype of the equipment that the "21st century land warrior" will have. His helmet will be fitted with microphones and earphones for communications, night-vision goggles and thermal-imaging sensors to see in the dark, along with a heads-up display in front of his eyes to show him where he is on the ground and give him constant intelligence updates.
Future warfare, in fact, may look like today's science-fiction thrillers. "One day national leaders will fight out virtual wars before they decide to go to war at all," predicts Lieut. General Jay Garner, head of the Army's Space and Strategic Defense Command. Some futurists take it a step further. Countries will have their computers fight simulated wars instead of actual battles to decide who wins. Garner is not willing to go that far. "I have a hard time visualizing that warfare will be a video game devoid of pain."
All this may presage a vast reorganization of the military. With microprocessors making smaller weapons systems and electronically controlled drones able to track and attack targets, aircraft carriers and manned bombers may become obsolete in future conflicts. Just as computers have flattened the organizational charts of corporations, the military may have to restructure its ranks with fewer layers of staff officers needed to process orders between a general and his shooters on the ground. The distinction between civilian and soldier may blur with more private contractors needed to operate complex equipment on the battlefield. There will, no doubt, be bureaucratic and even cultural opposition within the military to this new form of fighting. "It's a lot easier to pick up girls in the bar if you're a fighter-wing commander than if you command a drone wing," says Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who directs the Defense Budget Project, a think tank on the military.
There are skeptics, inside and outside of the Pentagon, who fear that infowar is being oversold. "If you think this is going to replace four divisions or a carrier battle group, it can't," insists a senior Army operations officer. "The adversary who's confronted with an information-warfare attack and doesn't see anything behind it is likely to see a paper tiger." Psy-ops succeeded in Haiti because 20,000 U.S. soldiers were on the way to back up the message. Even if infowar becomes the American way of fighting, it's not clear how effective it will be among other nations. "People in Bosnia will kill each other with butter knives," says defense consultant Bill Arkin. "Computer viruses aren't going to stop that conflict."