Sharing Information at the Operative Level

The information is vital in the conduct of war and the whole field of information warfare focuses on how one can achieve superiority over the enemy. Thus we finally know more about how we protect vital information, or how they are obtained than on how information is shared within a specific force. Human and interactional dimensions of war have less been studied whereas "friction" and "fog" act as much between the belligerents as within the armed forces.

My presentation will focus on information sharing, on cooperation around information. Officers are trained in staffs where hey learn to plan and conduct operations. How do they train on information sharing? If the control of information is considered a factor of operational superiority, how do they learn to get it? How are they prepared to work in a multinational environment? This is even more important because in the future the national armed forces will have to cooperate in various environments: NATO, EU, ad hoc, multi and bilateral, military or not. The paper will focus on the decision-making process: assessment of the situation, decision, order transmission, reporting. This presentation will be based on a field work that will take place in the first half of 2014, inside French joint staffs training forces.