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INFORMATION SUPERIORITY AT THE SEA
Independent Military Review. February 13-19, 2004. By Vladislav Kramar
That will obtain superiority in wars of the future who will ensure his leadership
in information technologies - this thesis seems to be an axiom. But scientific
concepts and doctrines remain abstract without an analysis of the present situation
in this segment of the native defense potential. Analyses based on facts distinguish
the book prepared by Vice-Admiral Georgi Popov, Professor of the Frontier Academy
of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, and by Rear-Admiral
Grigori Korolkov, the Chief of the Radiotechnical Service of the Russian Navy.
Such attempts to generalize the development history, the present state of naval
radiotechnical facilities, and their role and significance in processes of control
over naval forces, - were never made in open press.
The authors begin the book with rudiments: description of information streams
in naval control systems; monitoring of surroundings; information acquisition,
processing, display and analysis. They write about experience in creation and
modernization of Naval Radiotechnical Service marking in this year its 60th
anniversary. Then detailed description of naval monitoring facilities and systems
follows: articles about appearance and evolution of naval radio-location and
acoustics. The section about efficiency of monitoring and control is of great
interest. The book also describes operational information and control systems;
battle information and control systems; geoinformation technologies; methods
to base operational and tactical requirements to radio-electronic facilities
of ships. But the book gets its value not only due to show of historical retrospective
and current views on ways of evolution of radio-electronics, hydro-acoustics
and information technologies, and not due to illustrative schemes and unique
photos.
The authors do not only satisfy cognitive interests of the readers, but also
encourage to think about the future. It is the first time when Georgi Popov
and Grigori Korolkov write about necessity to solve problems of efficiency evaluation
for control and monitoring systems and all their components on the basis of
common criteria and quantitative indicators of continuity, stability, control
urgency and secrecy, and spatial coverage. The problem of control over the monitoring
system during a battle or military operation was never considered before.
So, this book would be useful for naval officers, specialists of military industry,
teachers and students of military and civil institutes of higher education.
The Head of the Main Staff of the Russian Navy Admiral Vladimir Kravchenko noted
in his foreword that modern naval forces "need officers for whom control panels
of a shipborne battle information and control system or a control system for
fleet forces are usual as a phone, TV or a pen". In order to create a common
naval information and control system, completely based on digital technologies
in all elements, there are required not only material resources, but also manpower
ones. Without solving these problems it is useless to set hopes upon statements
about "strategic partnership" with a neighbor beyond the ocean, who is actively
designing weapons of 6th generation now.
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