Network-centric warfare, also called network-centric operations or net-centric warfare, is a military doctrine or theory of war that aims to translate an information advantage, enabled partly by information technology, into a competitive advantage through the computer networking of dispersed forces. It was pioneered by the United States Department of Defense.
Understanding Information Age Warfare: Network-centric warfare was followed in 2001 by Understanding Information Age Warfare (UIAW), jointly authored by Alberts, Garstka, Richard Hayes of Evidence Based Research and David A. Signori of RAND. UIAW pushed the implications of the shifts identified by network-centric warfare in order to derive an operational theory of warfare.
Starting with a series of premises on how the environment is sensed, UIAW describes three domains. The first is a physical domain, where events take place and are perceived by sensors and people. Data emerging from the physical domain is transmitted through an information domain. It is processed in a cognitive domain before being acted upon.
The process is similar to a "observe, orient, decide, act" loop described by Col. John Boyd of the USAF.
The US Department of Defense’s Project Maven is the epicenter of American AI military efforts. This initiative uses machine learning to identify personnel and equipment, streamlining a process once painstakingly carried out by human analysts. The Maven Smart System fuses various data sources – satellite imagery, geolocation data, and communications intercepts – into a unified interface for battlefield analysis.