Recently discussions were started on whether the traditional Principles of War would be still relevant in the current information age, what kind of change would be appropriate, if necessary, and what principles should be included or excluded. These questions are very relevant under the huge changes made by information technologies. However, if we consider the minimal progress made on the Principles of War despite a few intensive research efforts in the past, we need to question about the productivity of traditional approach on the Principles of War, and move our focus on more productive and practical issues on the Principles of War. Before considering any changes to the traditional Principles of War, we need to ensure that those principles are fully utilized in planning and execution of military operations and develop a detail contents for everyone to understand quickly and easily.
In this sense, this article explained the concept and background of the Principles of War, raised some problems on the current approach to them, and recommended some changes on the focus of the research on the Principles of War. The recommendations are as follows. First, we should categorize the principles based on importance of each principle in the victory of war in order to understand them in a holistic way and put more emphasis on more essential principles. Second, we should systematically arrange and enrich the explanations of each principle for an easy and comprehensive understanding instead of making them concise by deleting controversial sentences. Third, we should develop the procedures which can ensure the application of those principles to the planning and execution of military operations. Finally, we may need to think about changing the title, the Principles of ‘War,' in order to reduce the confusion caused by the different concept modern war from traditional one in which the original Principles of War began.