INFORMATION ACTIVITIES – ESSENTIAL WARFIGHTING FUNCTION IN TODAY’S MILITARY OPERATIONS

Abstract

Abstract: The nature of recent military conflicts, largely unconventional, essentially involves two common features related to the type of actors involved and the methods used. If regarding the first of these, one can observe that the tendency is of metamorphosis of conflicts towards the area where state actors are forced to confront malignant non-state actors, such as terrorists or insurgents, the second refers to the methods used in such confrontations, most of them having an unconventional character, which does not comply with international conventions or the laws and principles of armed conflict, methods that have, because of the unprecedented technological development, increased in number and intensity. In this context, military forces have tried to adapt their approach to conflicts, to adjust their force structures, types of operations, but also the related procedures to try to find an optimal response in countering such behaviors. Against this background, the concept of information operations has acquired an essential importance, the use of actions subsumed to it offering the possibility of military force to create effects in the psychological dimension by influencing the target audience, with immeasurably greater results than the classical approach, with effects only in physical dimension.