Seeing, Knowing, and Deciding: The Technological Command Dream That Never Dies?

Could Gen. William Westmoreland see the future? In a 1970 issue of Army Aviation Digest, Westmoreland, then chief of staff of the U.S. Army, offered his view on the future of command decision-making. In the print version of a speech he had delivered the year before, he predicted the practice of command would take place on a highly surveilled, automated, and interconnected battlefield which, if such a system were realized, could “assist the tactical commander in making sound and timely decisions” as well as permitting “commanders to be continually aware of the entire battlefield panorama.”