Re-Envisioning Command and Control
This addresses the need for improved decision-making in complex, fast-paced military environments, but it is incremental as it builds on existing human-AI collaboration concepts without introducing a new method.
The paper tackles the problem of outdated Command and Control (C2) practices in future warfare, which are linear and time-consuming, by proposing a vision for future C2 based on human-AI partnerships to streamline operations, maintain unity of effort, and develop adaptive collective knowledge systems.
Future warfare will require Command and Control (C2) decision-making to occur in more complex, fast-paced, ill-structured, and demanding conditions. C2 will be further complicated by operational challenges such as Denied, Degraded, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL) communications and the need to account for many data streams, potentially across multiple domains of operation. Yet, current C2 practices -- which stem from the industrial era rather than the emerging intelligence era -- are linear and time-consuming. Critically, these approaches may fail to maintain overmatch against adversaries on the future battlefield. To address these challenges, we propose a vision for future C2 based on robust partnerships between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. This future vision is encapsulated in three operational impacts: streamlining the C2 operations process, maintaining unity of effort, and developing adaptive collective knowledge systems. This paper illustrates the envisaged future C2 capabilities, discusses the assumptions that shaped them, and describes how the proposed developments could transform C2 in future warfare.