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Army combining psychological and information warfare

The army is developing a new system of combined information technology and psychological warfare capabilities, defense sources said yesterday.

One of the army's objectives is to build a "virtual reality" system in its internal computer network as a defensive and offensive weapon against enemy hackers. The bogus system is aimed at making enemy hackers believe what they see on the computer network is real, when they are in fact being fed misinformation, an army official who has knowledge of the development said.

"The tactic might achieve strategic goals such as leading the enemy into a direction that we want them to go," the official said.

The army's psychological operations group and electronic warfare battalion are joining hands to develop the new tactics. These units were created two years ago on an experimental basis.

The two units are among the army's most secretive. They are comprised of top specialized personnel.

The army's deputy political warfare chief Major-General Hsiao Ju-po (蕭如波), who is over-seeing the development of the combined information and psychological warfare tactics, confirmed the existence of the program.

Hsiao said this was their top priority for the moment, but declined to comment further.

The concept of combined information and psychological warfare is new in Taiwan, but not in countries like the US and Russia. Information obtained by the army shows that the Chinese military also started developing combined information-psychological warfare capabilities in 1996.

According to an article in Army Academic Monthly's May, 2001, issue, China is also developing a bogus computer network to confuse potential enemies.

In addition to the virtual reality system, China is developing another tactic involving compu-ter attacks to deny an enemy the ability to make a correct judgment of the battlefield.
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