Command and Control

It’s not a topic that is spoken about enough in the national security community: Nuclear Command and Control (NC2), and Communications (NC3) is a world apart from C2 for conventional forces: it underpins strategic stability between nuclear armed states. With the emergence of a ‘3-body problem’ in Great Power Competition, there is a risk that Western leaders (political and military) simply try and transpose Cold War theories onto the problems of today, and add some AI/ML to make it look pretty. Professor Andrew Reddie from the Berkeley Goldman School at the University of California, explains why this would be foolhardy in a remarkably accessible way. That’s not easy given the emotion, biases, and vitriol that surround any discussion on NC2/NC3.

Fast reflections of the annual NATO C2 Centre of Excellence (C2COE) conference in the Hague with the centre’s commanding officer, Meitta Groeneveld. The challenging issues of MDO and Synchronisation, and the implications of that doctrine on command and control, were the conference’s planned themes. We ended up in a conversation about the Cross Domain Command Concept, data and the human, the need to share, the lessons from Ukraine on C2 about adaptation of C2, the community of interest (the “we”), the political (and societal) will to change, the journey towards and beyond C2 in MDO, and the Babylonian Confusion over doctrinal terms.

Both Mietta and I hope we haven’t done a disservice to attendees or speakers. It was challenging to digest and precis two and a half days of detailed, illuminating and engaging discussion into a short podcast episode. We tried!

The military sometimes promote and appoint leaders who are truly terrible. Sometimes this isn’t their fault, they are not always narcissistic or toxic: sometimes they are just not up to the job. But the issue for staffs is how to handle poor leaders. Professor William Scott Jackson from Oxford University is perhaps the foremost researcher in this field, and he brings with him a wealth of experience and lessons from the private and commercial world – much of it translates into the military world without much imagination. In this episode he talks about succession management, micro solutions for bad leaders, decision-making, the importance of thinking time, differentiated capability theory, and Blue Ocean Strategy. You decide how much of this translates to the Profession of Arms directly.

If there is some unresolved tension in the ideas of mission command and synchronisation – particularly within the MDO concept – then it could be more useful to think about the USMC idea of Coupling: the idea of providing linkage between warfare activities that are needed for to meet the task and/or mission. Instead of simply connecting everything because it’s possible, the Corps advocates for an approach that provides the means on a case-by-case basis. Interestingly, it is explained best in MCDP5 (USMC Planning) penned back in 1997, and signed off by the legend who is General Charles C. Krulac. Talking about C2 (reality and theory) is best done with a marine and Peter was joined for this discussion by Sean Welch, a marine with the intellectual and operational credentials to offer some important perspectives founded on the reality of combat.

Imagine sitting on a battlefield and trying to figure out what is happening with only your ears to guide you; your guidance is based on orders written weeks or months ago, and the last time you got an update of where your own forces where was a day old (at best). That, in essence, is submarine warfare. There is no constant information flow for situational awareness and communication (of any kind) endangers your existence; so submarine commanders are required to make decisions based on a series of assumptions about a myriad of variables and use their experience, judgement, advice from their team, and a deep understanding of their adversary. Building people who can do this – so different to most other warfare experiences – requires a special process: The Perisher. Peter talks to Phil Titterton about command and control of submarines, his experiences in the Royal Navy’s submarine service, and about waterspace management (submarine control measures). Now you can open your eyes.

Former NATO Sec Gen Jaap de Hoop Scheffer talks about what it takes to make effective command relationships work at the highest level of Pol/Mil C2: the tensions between domestic agendas and international obligations, decision-making in NATO, and how to achieve coherence and agreement in matters of war. The conclusion, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that the level of co-operation between politicians and their military counterparts is not something that can be scripted or forced: it depends more on personalities, behaviours, and shared interests than on orders and formal hierarchies. Reflecting on successes and failures, Jaap makes for compelling listening.

In providing commanders with the ability to command and control, computerised systems have been in use for more than 50 years. Their evolution from siloed systems inside individual units, moving across task forces, then to covering theatres has helped operators and HQ staffs orchestrate military means with increasing efficiency and lethality. The change in the last decade – according to Andrew Graham – has been in moving from enabling these domain-to-domain C2 structures to talk to each other, to one that has to integrate the data from each platform system to be seem by everyone else. Now that idea - based on an assumption of ubiquitous and constant connectivity - has evolved again. How can you operate a C2 system when to transmit data might spell certain death?

The captain of a warship has, sometimes, godlike omnipotence. Does this mean that naval command and control has some unique characteristics that need to be better understood in order to be integrated into the ‘modern’ rubric? Vice Admiral Martin Connell, Second Sea Lord in the British Royal Navy, talks to Peter about what’s unique about naval C2, and whether the education and development of leaders in the Royal Navy is good enough.

What makes a good and a great military leader? The myth of a divine, born leader is very popular but today we actually know better than this fiction. Science has given us the evidence to understand what traits and characteristics imbue a person with the skills and experience become a great leader. And we actually know how to select them based on the very different requirements in wartime and peacetime. It is also popular to talk about leadership and followership as two distinct functions; the term servant leader has become fashionable amongst military professionals as an attempt to delineate the boundaries between these two groups, yet still keep the hierarchy. Expert analysis is harder to find; for that we need to turn to science and a human psychologist. Sarah Chapman-Trim talks about making the least-worst decision (as opposed to the best one), the fallacy of the divine general, how we can train better leaders, and the dual-agency model of leadership. Sarah’s research paper (perhaps better understood with the title ‘Social identity as Alchemy’) is at https://www.army.mod.uk/media/24170/leadership-insight-no45-social-identity-as-a-leadership-tool.pdf

Many medium powers have been struggling to keep pace with the US military as it reimagines how it will undertake command and control over the coming decade. For those in Canada the challenge is extremely pertinent: shared coastlines, integrated C2 at NORAD, conjoined airspace and territorial seas, a long and unfenced land border, and the block between the US homeland and Russian forces in the Arctic. Canada also faces pressing concerns in trying to balance resources between the challenges being faced to their West as well as to their East and North. Deputy Commander of the Canadian Joint Operations Command, Major General Darcy Molstad talks to Peter about the various challenges, tensions and frictions, and how Canada has been adapting. Underneath all of the strategic discussion lies an enduring truth about what commanders face in the future, and what will be required of them: delegation to the point of discomfort.

A discussion with Major General Karl Engelbrekston, former chief of the Swedish Army who retired in Jun 2023. Command and control is clearly different when operating in environmental and geographic extremes; the High North (well inside the Arctic Circle) exemplifies those conditions. How to command and how to exercise control over military forces in those extremes leads to an interesting conversation about the realities of delegation and empowerment. Given Karl's experiences with multi-national forces too, there are some interesting take aways from this discussion that get to heart of modern C2. Most usefully, this conversation allows us to hold a mirror to some of the rhetoric about contemporary and future C2 made in other military circles. Sobering stuff.

Having an intelligent conversation about command and control requires a discussion with the USMC, the same institution that gave us the current C2 taxonomy back in the 1980s. While USMC force design 2030 leans towards a decentralised command structure and an aggregated control hierarchy, the pragmatism of the Corps has nested capabilities at lower levels that would allow a much more flexible approach to C2. In contrast to other forces which retain very structured C2 architectures, the USMC seems to be comfortable with a degree of ambiguity that would make others tremble. Peter talks to Colonel Lester (Ray) Gerber from USMC Pacific Forces Command about the philosophy of C2 in the Corps, about the nature of control now and in the future, and about the centrality of the human component. Much of the latter part of the discussion is focused on partners and allies: should we be ready for less command and more co-operation in a revised C2 dynamic fit for the fight tonight? Much to ponder on here.

Command and control in the air domain has always been very different to that of other domains. Much more control, command execute in differnt ways, at different levels, and all captured in the phrase "Best picture has....". How much has been forgotten from former expereinces of air C2 in major contests and competiton? How much are we willing to relearn? How much of the differences in domain specific C2 will be lost as we amalgamate and integrate structures towards a beautifully informed single commander or system, a la Enders Game? Peter talks to former senior RAF officer, Paul Kendall about our understanding of air power in the Western, Supremacy and Superiority, and a contested electronic environment without the freedoms that have been hallmarks of Western military operations since the 1990s. 

Having spent the week at the NATO C2 Centre of Excellence in The Hague, talking C2 with some impressive people, this episode captures a ‘hot wash’ between Peter and Colonel Mietta Groeneveld, Director and Commander of the C2COE. Given this was recorded only 90mins after a fairly intense 3 days, we don’t cover all the take aways, but it gives a flavour about some of the themes we talked about and some of Mietta's thoughts too.

In 2019, the Chiefs of Staff of the US military determined that C2 really had to adapt. The decision came after the publication of a report on Russian C2 and counter C2 capabilities: on that basis, the programme on Joint All Domain C2 was initiated. Currently, the US is spending between $1-2BN per year on it, having scoped it and pushed it forward with remarkable speed. It is progressing rapidly through the experimentation phase but has shifted shape over 5 years – moving from a plan to enable the Joint Force Commander with a long screwdriver to something that enables a more dynamic and rapid kill chain. As Rafael Lopez tells us, it may still suffer from “Principle Agent Problems”, but the future looks pretty bright.

In this final episode of series one, Vice Admiral Andy Burns, Major General Zac Stenning and Andrew Graham answered questions from the audience on command and control live at the DSEi event in London. The panel couldn’t get through all the challenges thrown their way so we focused on the big themes: What will C2 look like in the future? How will ML and AI impact decision-making? Will C2 survive in its current form? What does the role of the commander look like in the future? And do we train and educate our future commanders well enough? Lots to digest before we start recording series two…

People lie at the heart of any C2 complex – both those in command and their HQ staff, as well as those at the gritty end of an orders process. Beyond the dry doctrinal definitions of command and control sit the facets of mental capacity, resilience, adaptability, leadership, standards, behaviours, and trust. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach either because the shock of combat and the context (and battlefield geometry of the fight) differ between battles, let alone campaigns or wars. One combat experience might feel similar to previous experiences, another utterly alien. Peter talks to Major General Zac Stenning, Commandant Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Director of Army Leadership, about what these mean, about mission command, the future of C2, the joint and combined fight, and the need for a dynamic C2 structure, as well as the role of industry. Underpinning all of this is a desire -  perhaps even a need - to seek and exploit human creativity and initiative in combat. Heady stuff.

Everyone seems to be talking about how Artificial Intelligence inside HQs will revolutionise command and control. The issue is that we don't even seem to have an agreed definition of AI, and the pol and mil leaders providing this rhetoric don't seem to have an answer to that either (or really understand what it is). Sitting down with two AI specialists, people who work with AI engineers on a daily basis, was enlightening in terms of definitions, clarity and perspective. The reality - from people who make this happen - is that AI (as described by many people) is some way away from widespread utility on military operations: the policy drivers are absent, the confusion with autonomy is widespread, the military purpose is ill defined, and there is a missing pragmatism from the reality of technical development (not least in the inability to provide AI systems with clean databases to learn from). This view from the coalface of C2/AI development is genuinely enlightening. 

Trust has always been a central concept in military command and control: it can be based on a ‘Band of Brothers’ construct or something a bit more complex with allies and partners. Yet this human-to-human rubric is not the same when we consider the concept of trust as it applies to human-machine trust. Or is it? Peter talks to Christina Balis, who wrote a paper in June 2022 about human-machine trust, about how we should be thinking about this – something that has been missing from the discussions as more C2 systems are added into military forces. What emerges is a demand for less coders (or software savvy commanders), and more about diverse education sets and inquisitive minds. Especially if the philosophies of delegated and mission-command are to remain more than rhetoric.

In ‘How to Win’ rather than ‘How to Operate’ in a peer or near peer war, time is vital and the ability to share commands (orders) faster than an adversary becomes a critical function of campaigning. The ability to plan and create those orders rapidly enables a different operating tempo to be achieved, ensuring dissemination works to outpace opponents. Peter talks to Lt Gen (rtd) Ben Hodges, US Army, about the differences between historical C2, the contemporary fight, and the future of C2. A new orders process able to be worked and distributed across coalitions and alliances seems to be a fundamental part of success: underpinned by complex exercises, skilled use of common language, and a shared understanding of what needs to be done. In essence, we need to focus more on a ‘common tactical mindset’ than a ‘common operating picture’.