Center For Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS)
Maj Gen PK Mallick, VSM (Retd)
05 Apr 2023
Book Presentation
Confusion of Terminologies
Post Gulf War, U.S. DoD has pioneered all the thinking and doctrines of information warfare and later information operations. However, various terms used in their doctrines somehow are confusing and lack clarity. It is not surprising that the strategic community and the Department of Defense itself, uses the terms information warfare, information operations, psychological operations, military information support operations (MISO), strategic communication, influence operations and possibly cyberspace operations interchangeably, though they are not synonymous. Currently, U.S. Cyber Command wants to expand its ambit to include information operations and information warfare.
These inconsistencies eventually can create conceptual confusion. This results in misallocation and misalignment of resources and capabilities. For instance, such confusion will make it difficult to recruit, hire and train the right people for cyber and psychological operations/MISO positions due to a lack of understanding of what skill sets different missions require.
Page No 49
Page No 61
Page No 75
Joint Doctrine for Perception Management and Psychological Operations
Joint Doctrine for Perception Management And Psychological Operations, JP-9 was published by Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff in March 2010.
It was brought out earlier how U.S. has a lot of confusion regarding various terms used for information operations, psychological operations, influence operations and other terms. e same observations are applicable for this doctrinal publication.
Perception Management. The Doctrine says Perception Management comprise the following operations:
Perception Management is basically undertaken against the foreign audience.
Psy Ops are conducted against friendly forces and civil population as well as adversary’s forces and hostile people. Psy Ops are public presentation of the truth (not mis-information or propaganda).
Page No 102
Who is Responsible?
The most important issue is, who is in charge of Information/Psychological/Influence operations? In UK it is the foreign ministry. In U.S. the DoD takes the lead for the simple reason that they have got the funds. In recent times, the state department is being given importance, and funds are being transferred from DoD to the state department to carry out psychological operations. However, the cyber part for the delivery of content is still with DoD.
In the case of India, it is not clear who is overall responsible. For the allotment of budget and ability to prevail over the home ministry, foreign ministry and intelligence agencies, MoD definitely cannot be considered as the lead agency. At the most, MoD can lead in influence activities in CI/CT Ops within the country. The army in operational and tactical levels do a good job. However, there is no formalised mechanism. It is the personality of the commander on the ground which drives this operation.
Page No 105
Cyber Domain
Page No 210
Page No 239
Space Domain
Summary of Recommendations
Page No 389
Issues