This is a thought piece produced by collaboration amongst Air University C2 subject matter experts, led and edited by LeMay Center Strategy & Concepts, to address a question from an Air Force senior leader, asking if the Air Tasking Order had become a sacred cow. Q: "I think a robust investigation into its utility through the years, how it was developed and evolved, and what purpose(s) it ultimately serves would really inform any thought on how it may transform as part of a future C2 construct. Some key questions come to mind: Is it still a valid "centerpiece?" In its current form, does it enable us to transition into a more robust, multi-domain-friendly architecture and execution paradigm? What does it enable that we must protect if we're to transform our C2 paradigms?"
The Air Tasking Order – It’s Evolution, Purpose, and Alternatives
The history of the Air Tasking Order - and the Joint Air Tasking Process that produces it – can be traced back to the system designed for the command and control of American and coalition airpower in WWI. This paper describes a brief history of the development of the Air Tasking Order, its purpose, and some alternatives that deserve further research.
As Colonel Billy Mitchell and Gen Mason Patrick prepared the plans for the 1476 aircraft, five nation air effort in support of the St. Mihiel offensive, they issued Circular Number 1. This document became the forerunner to the modern JAOP and AFFOR OPORD, and set the parameters for the ATO equivalent “plan of employment”, which Mitchell described as
“…the most important document which has to be prepared at the beginning of a battle, and from its complete and thorough understanding does success or failure result. A plan of employment tells each branch of aviation what it must do in accordance with the general object of the operations, and how every detail is to be handled as occasions may arise.”
As technology progressed, air capabilities, and the ability to control them increased. Advances in radios and radar enhanced the ability to provide command and control of aircraft beyond mission type orders issued before takeoff, as evidenced by Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding’s system of air defense during the Battle of Britain. The Allies were able to successful air operations during World War II, but as James Winnefeld and Dana Johnson observed, those results were achieved “in spite of that lack of coordinated effort, experience, and doctrine.” In the years that followed, conflicts with the other services drove experiments with various C2 constructs, eventually resulting in the modern Joint Air Tasking Cycle and the Air Tasking Order. This construct embodies the Air Force’s doctrinal view that air and space operations should be planned and directed by one commander, a single airman who recommends the priorities for joint air assets to a joint force commander. As Winnefield and Johnson describe it, “The crux of the Air Force argument in joint air operations is unity of air command and equality with naval and ground components in the theater command structure”.
The Joint Air Tasking Process and Air Tasking Order became “locked-in” when it was the only practical solution for the requirements of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. As the sole method to handle the complexity of planning, executing, and assessing thousands of sorties per day, it preserved the unity of the joint and coalition air effort, and protecting the joint operational command relationships specified in the Goldwater- Nichols Act of 1986. AOC processes are critical for facilitating JFC commander level processes (e.g. air apportionment decisions, joint targeting, movement, & ISR prioritization, spectrum management, air defense, etc.), not just JFACC C2 processes.
The current practice of “centralized command, decentralized execution” is necessary when joint forces are highly dependent on air component capabilities, but there is insufficient quantity in the air component for every commander to have everything they want at all times. Difficult decisions - often at the JFC level - must be made when “tightly coupled” forces require mutual assistance for mission accomplishment, and when the same logistics, communications, bases, aerial refueling, personnel recover assets, etc. must be shared between many different forces. In these situations, decisions made at the “tactical edge” can have adverse and wide ranging compounding effects, hence the need for central monitoring, management, and synchronization. Centralized C2 makes it possible to meet multiple mission requirements, and to support multiple theaters, with an economy of force. This has been necessitated by the drawdowns that started in the wake of Desert Storm and continue today.
Recently, there have been several proposals to decentralize the command and control of joint air operations, either from the perspective of enhancing C2 resilience and mission command, or based upon the proposition that enhancements in technology and data flow will negate the requirement for our current AOC processes. While it’s certainly worth exploring these concepts, and mining them for potential innovations, we also must ensure that we do not neglect the joint and coalition capabilities that those AOC processes create and preserve. But what if we started from a clean slate, and considered another paradigm entirely, one driven from the bottom up? What if we had a highly fluid and adaptive force, pushing “Power to the Edge”, using technology to make faster, more efficient decisions about targeting and execution? What if we could use capabilities like big data for pattern recognition, apply “just in time” principles, and decentralize authorities to enable faster kill chain execution along a “measure and react” approach? This may be a valid approach to take for some very specific problem sets, but general “bottom up” C2 concepts usually require assumptions that may oversimplify the actual challenges. Typical assumptions that require validation in specific contexts include:
Even if the challenges of interdependence and asset scarcity can be resolved to reduce the logistical need for centralized control, there is usually still a need provide responsive C2 to support changing JFC guidance, or the negotiation of conflicting supporting and supporting relationships. Even with perfect communications, there are often coordination challenges that preclude locally derived solutions. Without central command, guidance may become stale, and tight interdependencies can rapidly create common contagions where small failures rapidly cascade into larger ones. Bottom up approaches require local experimentation and learning by their nature, and thus must make allowances for failure as part of their design. Such failures need to be survivable, or at least within JFC or POTUS defined acceptable levels of risk, and within sustainable levels of attrition. Bottom up approaches typically require additional quantity to match the levels of responsiveness made possible with centralized C2, and may be more difficult to synchronize in time and space.
The greatest C2 challenge of the next few decades will be managing the proper balances of human and machine decision making, with both making the best decisions they can under conditions of unavoidable uncertainty and ambiguity. We’ll also need to be cautious which cognitive functions we delegate to our machines, as we’ll gradually lose those functions ourselves. Our best hedge against these challenges is to preserve a cadre of C2 experts, who can adaptively command and control airpower with whatever tools they have, and delegate to the level that the task calls for.