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Military information operations analysis using influence diagrams and coloured Petri Nets

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Abstract

This report describes how Influence Diagrams, Coloured Petri Net models and related techniques may be used to analyse certain aspects of Military Information Operations.An example is employed to demonstrate these techniques. The example used is a very simplified representation of a Military Command Organisation dealing with a decision problem. The objective of the report is to provide theory, methods and techniques to support the assessment of the effect of Military Information Operations on such organisations.The simplicity of the example permits the basic concepts to be clearly conveyed.T hey may readily be extended to the analysis of more complex examples as required. The most fundamental and significant concept developed in this report is that of a common quantitative measure of effectiveness that encompasses all types of Information Operations relevant to Information Warfare.This permits the direct comparison of the effectiveness of alternative Information Operation options with one another and also with conventional operations options.This latter ability is essential if Information Operations are to be employed appropriately as part of a broader range of military options.

Executive Summary

This report describes how Influence Diagrams, Coloured Petri Net models and related techniques may be used to analyse certain aspects of Military Information Operations. An example is employed to facilitate the exposition of these techniques.The example used is a much simplified representation of a military command organisation.The objective of the report is to provide theory, methods and techniques to support the assessment of the effect of Military Information Operations on such organisations.The simplicity of the example permits the basic concepts to be clearly conveyed.They may readily be extended to the analysis of more complex examples as required. The most fundamental and significant concept developed in this report is the introduction of a common quantitative measure of effectiveness that encompasses all types of Information Operations relevant to Information Warfare.This permits the direct comparison of the effectiveness of alternative Information Operation options.F urthermore, this effectiveness measure is also applicable to conventional operations, so that the effectiveness of Information Operations may be compared against the effectiveness of alternative conventional operations.This latter ability is essential if Information Operations are to be employed appropriately as part of a broader range of military options. The focus of the report is on Information Operations effects.The means by which such effects might be achieved are not discussed in detail here.This will be a matter for future research.Ho wever, some commonly cited examples of such means are physical targeting of information repositories and information infrastructure, Electronic Warfare, Operational Security, Signature Reduction, Psychological Operations, disinformation, decoys, diversionary tactics and Computer Network Attack. The effects have been classified into two broad categories, which have been termed secular effects and temporal effects.S ecular effects are considered to be those effects which do not depend explicitly on a time parameter.T emporal effects, in contrast, do exhibit an explicit dependence on a time parameter.The secular effects that are considered in this report are Information Denial, Deception and Psychological Attitude Shift.The temporal effects considered are Information Delay and Prolonged Decision Making.The se last two are obviously characterised by the temporal parameters of delay time and increase in decision-making time, respectively. It is felt that these five effects broadly cover all aspects of Information Warfare, and that, therefore, the techniques presented in this report provide are applicable to all Information Warfare problems of interest.The y do not, however, cover the entire field of Information Operations.For example, they do not address the effect of Information Exploitation.These wider effects will also be a matter for future research. The most important achievement reported here has been the quantification of all five effects in terms of a common measure.The significance of this is that it allows the numerical comparison of the effectiveness of Information Operations of differing types.This in turn allows the most effective type of operation to be selected by a commander. Furthermore, the effectiveness of conventional operations could also, in principle, be reduced to the same measure, thus permitting a comparison of the effectiveness of Information Operations with that of comparable conventional operations.This would be important in justifying the allocation of valuable resources to Information Operations. The analysis methods and techniques demonstrated are Information Theory, Utility Theory, Decision Trees, Influence Diagrams, Coloured Petri Nets, Monte Carlo Simulation and Queueing Network Analysis.I nformation Theory is used to measure information quantity, while Utility Theory is used to measure information importance and significance. Decision Trees and Influence Diagrams are alternative techniques for solving decision problems based on Utility Theory.Influence Diagrams are the more recently invented and more powerful technique.Wh ile the preceding methods are sufficient for analysing secular effects, they do not encompass temporal effects.C oloured Petri Nets are therefore used to include temporal effects in the model.Tw o means of deriving the required measure of effectiveness from the Coloured Petri Net are demonstrated.T he first is Monte Carlo Simulation, which is generally applicable, but can be computationally expensive if accurate results are required.The second is reduction of the Coloured Petri Net to a Queueing Network.F or sufficiently elementary problems, the Queueing Network can be solved mathematically for the required effectiveness measures.T his approach is also demonstrated for the simple example used here.

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