Integration is the New Black: Thoughts on Future Warfare in Academic and Military Discourses

Abstract

Western military policy-formation and doctrine seems to be gravitating towards the idea of integration, reflected in concepts such as integrated campaigning, Integrated Operating Concept, and Multi-Domain Integration -among others. Despite the increasing use of the term within military doctrines and concept papers, there is little scholarly writing on what "integration" actually means. This study contributes to the small but growing body of research on joint operations with a novel analysis on how the term "integration," and its sister term "interoperability," are used within academic and military discourses. The results show that the terms are given different meanings both across and within discourses. It can be deduced that "integration" is generally understood as the merging of domains and services towards joint goals while "interoperability" is often presented as the ability to combine systems, forces, and planning across services. These findings are used to create a conceptual model which distinguishes between operability, interoperability, and integration as preconditions for the conduct of joint operations. The model is in turn useful for both scholars and practitioners when discussing or assessing capabilities to perform joint operations.

Preparing for the ‘next pandemic’: Why we need to escape from our silos

“…As a consequence, military staff colleges have spent many hours studying how to deploy combined operations and other models of working together. 34 More recently, the problems were explored in detail by the anthropologist turned journalist Gillian Tett, who described how keeping knowledge in siloes led to failures, in some cases spectacularly so, as in the global financial crisis of 2008 or the failure of Sony to keep pace with its competitors. 35 However, she also describes successes, such as the boot camp and mobility within teams employed by Facebook to enable cross-fertilisation of ideas or the management structure of the Cleveland Clinic, which has found ways of breaking down the professional barriers that characterise so much of the American health system.…”

“…The history of warfare, in particular, is full of examples of disasters that arose when one group failed to understand what another could do. As a consequence, military staff colleges have spent many hours studying how to deploy combined operations and other models of working together 34 . More recently, the problems were explored in detail by the anthropologist turned journalist Gillian Tett, who described how keeping knowledge in siloes led to failures, in some cases spectacularly so, as in the global financial crisis of 2008 or the failure of Sony to keep pace with its competitors 35 .…”