...it uses a new explanatory model of cognition in combat (1) to explore what Custer's case suggests about decisionmaking in today's era of networked warfare.

How does this flamboyant 19th-century cavalry officer relate to information-age military decisionmaking? After all, Custer's "bandwidth"--binoculars and scouts--was negligible by today's standards. Yet there are good reasons to consider his experience.

First, 19th-century cavalry action was a precursor of the fast-breaking distributed warfare that characterizes the network era. Cavalry-type missions (reconnaissance, deep strike, disruption) and qualities (speed, flexibility) are relevant in current warfare. The cavalry had to respond to the unfamiliar, unclear, and unanticipated. More than those who directed set-piece infantry maneuvers and artillery bombardments, cavalry commanders had to make prompt decisions under fluid and ambiguous conditions, often without guidance from higher authority, much like tactical-level officers in networked warfare.

More generally, how fallible humans can make sense of information, draw on experience, analyze options, and make decisions in the face of danger, urgency, and uncertainty are questions as old as military history. There is no more arresting case of ill-fated decisionmaking by an individual under pressure than Custer's Last Stand. The battle offers insights into how and how not to combine experience-based intuition and information-based reasoning, both crucial in today's world of uncertainty and abundant information. Custer's thinking worked well during much of his career. Most of the 20-plus battles he fought in the Civil War were victories, and only one was a clear defeat, suggesting superb decisionmaking and perhaps high self-regard. Yet his cognition failed utterly at the Little Bighorn. The contrast offers fuel for analysis if we can deduce why and how he made his decisions.

[FIGURES 1-2 OMITTED]

We begin by offering a model for effective decisionmaking in combat when time short, danger is great, and conditions are unfamiliar and dynamic. We call this battlewisdom. If Custer was battle-wise in earlier battles, why not in his final one? By observing him in that light, we can learn about good and bad decisionmaking in combat as well as about the man who made the Last Stand.

Battle-Wisdom

We should take a particularly keen interest in military decisionmaking at this juncture for two reasons: information networking is enabling better decisionmaking, and geopolitical turmoil is making better decisionmaking imperative. Today, such enemies as al Qaeda are exploiting information to complicate and confuse our strategic and operational reasoning. Cognitive superiority has never been so crucial; indeed, it is the new plane of military competition. But what is it?

When conditions are complex and unstable, time is short, and information is abundant, the key to making good decisions is to blend reliable intuition with timely reasoning. Intuition is demanded by urgency. Research in many fields (military, emergency room care, firefighting, neonatal intensive care) shows that the greater the time pressure, the more decisionmakers rely on intuition. (2) For our purposes, intuition is the mental model, or map, a person brings to a situation, mainly based on experience and only lightly affected by fresh information. Intuitive decisionmakers do not weigh the risks and rewards of alternative courses of action but proceed down the paths they have been conditioned to believe are right for given circumstances. The reliability of intuition depends heavily on whether the circumstances at hand are broadly familiar. In strange circumstances, therefore, intuition can be wrong.

Conversely, reasoning (informed, methodical, logical analysis) is vital when complexity and change (unfamiliarity) reduce the utility of experience, on which intuition depends. Reasoning uses new information to check and correct intuition and to consider the merits and costs of multiple options. However, reasoning can be time-consuming, so people neglect it when time is precious, as it is in combat. It follows that the decompression of time and chance to exploit information is crucial for introducing reasoning and for cognitive effectiveness, less by replacing intuition with reasoning than by integrating the two.

Those good at integrating intuition with reasoning should make good military decisionmakers. They tend to be self-aware--to know or be able to judge dispassionately how much they can count on their intuition. Before making irretrievable decisions, they will consider whether their prefabricated mental models are applicable to the situation at hand.

The way decisions are made during operations is...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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