DATE: Thursday, September 11, 1997          TAG: 9709110569

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A6   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   39 lines

MILITARY MAY NEED TO TAKE HIGH TECH 101

America's fighting future will rely on whiz-bang gadgets that give battlefield commanders more information about the enemy, their own forces and their surroundings than ever before.

But training the nation's military to use the new technology is lagging, speakers at the U.S. Naval Institute's annual warfare symposium said Wednesday - and that could weaken any advantage it offers.

Commanders now find themselves drowning in data, most of it of no help to them as they strive to gain an edge against their opponents, Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, said in the symposium's opening address.

``I get more data at my level than I could ever process or handle,'' Zinni told an audience of military officers, retirees and civilians at the Pavilion. ``We haven't figured out a way to process that rapidly and get it to the commanders.''

Retired Navy Adm. Leighton W. ``Snuffy'' Smith, appearing at a later panel discussion, agreed that ``technology is leaping ahead, but we're not really taking advantage of it.''

``We're getting more data than we need,'' he said, ``and not enough information.''

Those commanders who do receive relevant information often don't know how to use it, Zinni suggested. The nation's military field leaders have been trained to operate amid uncertainty, he said, and are often uncomfortable using the new insight of that technology.

``Tell a commander today to leave a flank exposed,'' said Zinni, whose command oversees American military forces in the Middle East. ``Tell a commander to skip steps 2, 3 and 4, and go straight to 5. We are not, by nature, risk-takers.''

The symposium, the second in Virginia Beach by the Annapolis-based Naval Institute, a nongovernment publishing house, continues today with speeches and panel discussions examining America's war-fighting readiness.

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