Service Reliability of NCO Information Product Manufacturing Systems

1.1 Rationale Realizing the power of Network Centric Operations (NCO) depends directly not only on implementing weapon platform sophistication and lethality advances but also on how efficiently and effectively Units of Action (UofA) exploit information advantage to drive positive battlespace outcomes. We define information advantage following Driscoll and Henderson [1]: given existing intelligence gathering capabilities, information advantage is the difference between the time US Forces accurately identify opposing force operational state(s) and force disposition and the time US Force operational state and disposition is known by an opposing force. When this difference is positive, it indicates that US Forces possess sufficiently good information that affords them an ability to both decisively plan in a shorter decision cycle than the opposing force and to proactively position troops and material in the battlespace to interdict opposing force operations at a place and time where they will be.