Network Centric Operation (NCO)

In the past decade, we have witnessed that the management information systems has undergone a phenomenal growth in their capabilities. Their functions have become more powerful and sophisticated which has made it as one of the important tools in aiding the management efficiency and effectiveness. All organizations try not to be left behind in advancing their management information system, including also the military sector of our country as well. On military perspective, it is much more different. The information system is also known as the Military intelligence. The military information system (military intelligence) is a military discipline that gathers a number of information collection and analysis to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions making (Ruiz, 2010). Murshardin (2001) in his paper titled "Impact of Information Technology and Information Warfare on Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF)" has emphasized the importance of Information and Communication Technology (lCT) in Revolution of Military Affair (RMA) for future warfare. He also mentioned that computer and electronic devices may become dangerous weapon in the future warfare. Therefore, information attribute will play a key role in any future operation. In Malaysia, the most important information system that being uses by the Malaysian Army Forces (MAF) is the Network Centric Operation (NCO).

The NCO is the combination of emerging tactics, techniques and procedures that a fully or even partially networked force can employ to create a decisive war-fighting advantage (Arthur, 2013). In general, the NCO is a battle simulation program created by the US Defence Department around the 90s, which known as the Network Centric Warfare, with the use of US war doctrine that is supported by sophisticated IT (Alberts, 2002).  According to Alberts (2002) in “Information Age Transformation: Getting to a 21st Century Military”, network centric warfare can trace its immediate origins to 1996 when Admiral William Owens introduced the concept of a ‘system of systems’ in a paper of the same name published by the US Institute National Security Studies. In Malaysia, the concept of this system was brought in 2008, and then it was agreed to create it in 2013 which was announced by the Minister of Defence on that time, which is Datuk Sri Dr. Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. SAPURA Technologies Sdn. Bhd., with its technological partner THALES,has been appointed to develop the Development of Network Centric operation (NCO) Malaysian Armed Force’s program at the cost of RM140 million (Utusan, 2013).

The Malaysian NCO is described as the full spectrum dominance in full control, self-awareness and self-synchronisation. Full Spectrum Dominance in full control NCO stands for fully information gathering and denying information from being access to the enemy operation. Shared awareness and self-synchronization means that all of the commanders in each level from Division until the bottom of the platoon and section can make decisions more quickly and efficiently and at the same time planning to reduce, confusing, destroying or delaying information about the companions from reaching in the hands of enemy.

Generally, Network Centric Operation (NCO) is it helps to translate an information advantage into a decisive warfighting advantage. The information gathered from soldiers and devices will enable the battalion to acquire information advantage which enabled by the robust networking of well-informed geographically perspectives. The information gathered is them shared within the battalion and contribute to the shared situational awareness which increase the knowledge of commander’s decision making and exploits IT for networking forces. NCO will also help to gain warfighting advantage which it helps to exploitation of behavioural change and new doctrine to enable the self-synchronization, speed of command and increase combat power.

Basically, the NCO in each individual unit will follow the same system and link into the same battle awareness with the whole team of friends. How much the information should be shared is up to the discretion of commanders for the smooth running of operations. In NCO, the tracking down and destroying is put in one unit of war fighter, and information of the target that need to be destroyed is in the result of the information sharing with other units of war fighter under this NCO system. Commanders may restrict how much information should be shared and the NCO personnel will ensure that only the necessary information only displayed on the units’ BMS (the screen displaying the NCO information) but the unit can easily access other information through the same network if he needs it. According to Major Hassan, he said that the ATM has reported that they has already been using its NCO system for approximately two years, and it was currently employed in combat operations in Lahad Datu in Sabah.