The Department of the Navy must be able to manage and defend its information posture, including its information vulnerability, in the coming era of prolific information gatherers and promulgators. While doing this, the Navy Department must be able to deny information to adversaries as well as manipulate and/or attack it.

There are technology thrust areas that, if pursued, would provide the Department of the Navy with significant capabilities in information operations and information warfare. These technology thrust areas are based on the estimated evolutionary path of the global information environment in which the Navy Department will operate.

These capabilities must include both the content and infrastructure aspects of information.

None of this is inexpensive. There is clearly a tradeoff between the technological investments required to fully exploit the potential of IO and IW and the ongoing capitalization requirements of the more conventional platforms and weapons systems. The Navy Department must make these difficult tradeoffs to lay a foundation for its future ability to use information and information systems to support naval operations.