Air defense systems, for instance, work better when integrated across facilities than when each facility works independently. The extent to which operations depend on the flow determines whether efforts to cut communications are worthwhile. Cutting communication links requires knowing how the other side communicates. If satellites are used for transmission and signalling, then communication lines can be jammed, deafened, or killed. The impact of attacks depends on how far the other side has progressed from the mainframe era.
Redundancy is an attribute of both developed less developed states.
The Iraqis, as it turned out, had many communications systems, more perhaps than even they were aware of, from radio systems that Western oil contractors had left in place to rural telephone systems that routed around major cities. Deliberate redundancy, of course, is more efficient than accidental. Systems that replicate message traffic multiply the likelihood of a message getting through in highly degraded conditions, even if redundancy reduces the system's overall capacity. A strategy of redundancy still leaves the management problem of distinguishing vital bit flows from merely useful ones. Bureaucratic, rather than technological, factors may determine the vulnerability of any data-passing system.