Some Fundamental Concepts of C2 in Contested Environments
Lt Col Dave Lyle, LeMay Center Strategy & Concepts
The challenges of command and control in contested environments are not new, nor should they surprise us. General Helmuth Von Moltke the Younger became intimately familiar with these challenges in 1914 while losing the First Battle of the Marne in World War I, when a powerful radio transmitter on the top of the Eiffel Tower disrupted his radio communications from 150 miles away, destroying his ability to radio instructions to German forces that had advanced beyond the reach of his telegraphs.[1] The fundamental challenges of command and control (C2) in contested environments are the same today, even if significant innovations in the technology have dramatically enhanced our ability to conduct it. Currently, we are able to coordinate the simultaneous actions of military forces around the globe, and achieve feats of synchronization and precision that futurists of old could only dream about. At the same time, we have also allowed ourselves to become more dependent on our tools, and we may have lost touch with many of the basic tenets of C2. Understanding the fundamental challenges and tradeoffs of C2 in any environment will help us to take proactive measures to protect our C2 in contested environments, while also helping us to avoid putting false faith in proposed technical solutions that cannot handle the complexity of the task.
Why C2 Theory Matters
Most would agree that it would be completely irresponsible and negligent to design a new combat fighter aircraft without a thorough understanding of aerodynamics, engineering, thermodynamics, computer science, the nature of the aircraft’s intended mission, the energy maneuverability theory that underlies our modern fighter aircraft tactics, and much more. Theory from these domains helps us to conceptualize the crucial variables, systemic relationships, and irreducible tradeoffs that must be balanced to achieve advantage and effectiveness in aerial combat as man and machine combine to accomplish the mission. Similarly, it would be equally irresponsible for anyone to suggest technical solutions, or prescriptive C2 constructs and procedures, without a thorough understanding of the fundamental informational and organizational theories inherent to command and control. These basic theoretical principles should serve as the conceptual underpinnings of any discussion of command and control, whether the C2 environment is being contested or not.
The Foundational Concepts of C2
Military historian Martin Van Creveld observed: “As even a cursory look at their nature will reveal, the functions of command are eternal. Provided he had a force of any size at his disposal, a stone-age chieftain would be confronted with every single one of them, just as is his present day successor.” [2] Given this, it is necessary to define exactly what those unchanging functions are, and what they mean in a practical sense. According to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, command and control is “[t]he exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission.” Thus, the two essential elements are, first, a commander who has the authority to assign missions and direct forces to accomplish them, and second, a system through which the commander can communicate with his or her forces and control their actions to achieve that mission.
Commanders achieve this ability through the use of a command and control system, defined in the DoD Dictionary as “[t]he facilities, equipment, communications, procedures, and personnel essential to the commander for planning, directing, and controlling operations of assigned forces pursuant to the missions assigned.” Thus, the design of a command and control system must focus on serving the needs of the commander, and must flex to both the individual commander’s specific requirements and the specific requirements of the mission. As described by RAND researchers Carl Builder, Steven Bankes, and Richard Nordin in their study “Command Concepts: A Theory Derived from the Practice of Command and Control”, the essence of command and control is developing, transmitting, and executing the “command concept” that only the commander has the authority to develop and promulgate:
"Going beyond personality alone, our theory suggests that the essence of command lies in the cognitive processes of the commander – not so much the way certain people do think or should think as the ideas that motivate command decisions and serve as the basis of control actions: Ideally, the commander has a prior concept of impending operations that cues him (and his C2 system) to look for certain pieces of information. Our theory cuts through the technological overlay that now burdens the subject… [and] represents an attempt to separate the intellectual performance of the commander from the technical performance of the C2 system."[3]
In other words, the critical minimum infrastructure of a C2 system cannot be determined generically or agnostically -- it is entirely dependent what a specific commander needs to formulate and turn his or her command concept into meaningful, collective action responsive to a changing environment. C2 systems, however they are constructed, must be adequate to match the specific needs of the commander. At a minimum, they must:
Those are the unchanging basics – any discussion of C2 systems, contested or otherwise, must stay centered on supporting these basic processes. It is the job of the commanders and the staff to build and adapt the C2 system to meet those parameters in each case, and there is seldom only one feasible and acceptable way to do it.
Other Universal C2 Concepts
When gauging the requirements of C2 in Contested Environments and designing mitigation strategies, it is important to make distinctions in the challenges that are universal to all C2 situations, and which ones must be specifically qualified before making value judgments. Failure to do so usually results in blanket rules and bumper stickers that mislead us into designing solutions that are not suited to the actual problems encountered.
Authority and Control
Authority is inherent in command, and can normally be delegated depending on the sources of that authority, regardless of the type of C2 system being used to exercise that authority. Delegation of control is a separate matter – it depends on having the capability to exercise the degree of authority delegated, and is sensitive to the requirements of the specific missions and tasks that must be accomplished. In contested environments, delegation of both authority and control may be necessary to fulfill the commander’s concept, but the two must not be confused.
Potential errors and risks of misunderstanding the distinction: just because authority can be delegated does not mean that subordinate commanders have the ability to build the situational awareness needed to make appropriate decisions, or that they will have the necessary degree of control to accomplish the mission. Likewise, just because another staff has the capability to assume command functions, and the superior commander desires to delegate either authority or control, does not necessarily mean that the superior commander is empowered to delegate his or her authority. Again, that depends on the source of command authority.
Mission Command
Mission Command is a CJCS-endorsed concept that proposes that authority and control should normally be delegated to the lowest echelon possible in order to allow for autonomous actions of subordinates in accordance with the commander’s intent. Mission Command assumes that the subordinate commander usually has more tactical situational awareness than the higher level commander, and can better decide which actions will best accomplish the overall intent of the senior commander due to his or her fine-grained understanding of local conditions and dynamics. This concept allows subordinates to take advantage of tactical opportunities that would be impossible for the higher headquarters commander to sense, process, and control in a timely manner, which is also the basis of the USAF doctrinal concept of “centralized control, decentralized execution” during tactical execution of a centrally-generated Air Tasking Order. The delegation of authorities and control implied by Mission Command can also help to maintain continuity of operations and the sustainment of operations tempo if the overall commander loses the ability to control subordinate units, providing them with the ability to execute his or her intent during the time in which they are incommunicado.
But as Col Clinton Hinote points out in “Centralized Control and Decentralized Execution: A Catchphrase in Crisis?” it is not always the one closest to the action who has the best situational awareness on the overall situation, especially when strategic success is highly sensitive to the results of specific tactical actions:
"A command and control structure designed to ensure flexibility at the operational and strategic levels of war almost always requires restrictions at the tactical level, and the opposite is true as well. It is important, therefore, that commanders decide the appropriate level to preserve flexibility. Nuclear operations, for example, are highly centralized—for good reason. They are designed to give the president flexibility at the strategic level, so they are highly restricted at the tactical level. Conversely, counterinsurgency operations tend to be highly decentralized, ensuring flexibility for the tactical commanders to increase legitimacy and influence within the population. Other military missions tend to fall somewhere between these two extremes."[4]
Thus, the value of delegating control is neutral until you define what you value the most, and it is inherently dependent upon the specifics of both the mission and the specific situation.
Effectiveness vs. Efficiency
When discussing the appropriate level of delegation of control, the “effectiveness vs. efficiency” argument usually comes to the fore. Most commonly, commanders who are supported by centrally controlled assets propose that they will accept some waste and inefficiency in order to have more fine-grain control and responsiveness when and where they need it. But framing the problem in this way proposes a false relationship between effectiveness and efficiency, one that masks a difference of emphasis on results at different levels of organizational scale. In fact, practices of efficiency create effectiveness too, but at the theater or operational level, by providing the ability of limited assets to service more distinct local areas with fewer assets. Calls for “effectiveness over efficiency” would usually be better understood as calls for “local effectiveness at the cost of potential effectiveness in other areas”, because that is really what is being debated. To presume that efficiency is different than effectiveness is only true if one focuses their view on one specific geographic area, without regard to the actual or potential requirements to support other separate areas. Thus, such discussions are really questions of apportionment, one that is driven by scarcity of assets that precludes all of the separate requestors from being supported equally and simultaneously.
Communication vs. Coordination
Additionally, it is important to distinguish between two very different types of C2 challenges that are often conflated or confused in discussions of C2 in contested environments –communication and coordination.
Communication is about faithfully encoding command concepts into data that is then passed as information by elements of the C2 system, which is received and decoded and interpreted by subordinate staffs to inform their actions. It is also about the flow of information, sending it where it is needed, when it is needed, and filtering out distracting or ambiguous signals. But in the case of contested C2 environments, staffs must confront distortions and disruptions in the passing of information, which may prevent commanders from being informed and being able to control their forces, or may keep subordinates from getting their guidance, and making appropriate adjustments as the situation changes. Communications can be disrupted on any level of the communications system. This can involve physical disruption of the hardware elements, denial of information transfer (i.e., jamming, spamming), degradation of the integrity of the systems that process the information (i.e. data manipulation, malicious code), interference with the interpretation of data or the actions of automated systems (i.e. spoofing, data replacement, user interface manipulation), or exploitation of the normal functioning of the system to gain an advantage (spying). Communication is the vehicle by which coordination is done through the passing of information, but it is not the same as coordination itself – it is more about the passing and interpretation of data, and is agnostic to the accuracy or value of the information encoded in the data.
In the sense of command and control, coordination is about the development of commanders’ concepts between disparate organizational elements, and the synchronization of their efforts in time and space to achieve the commander’s aims. It presumes that simple deconfliction of separately executed operations will not be sufficient, and that complimentary capabilities of the entire force will be necessary to achieve at least some portion of the mission. Because coordination happens between distinct organizational elements, staffs will always be challenged by the realities of sharing information between different “families of origin” with their own unique doctrine and lexicons. Conducting parallel planning is a huge challenge even with perfect, uncontested communications, and proper coordination defines what the division of responsibility will be as all of the various players conduct their operations in concert. Coordination also often involves negotiation, as different ideas about the best way to execute the mission, and to determine priorities and timing, must be resolved, with differing viewpoints and assumptions ultimately being adjudicated by the commander. Thus, coordination produces feasible plans, and creates the meaning behind the data that is passed between C2 systems.
Thus, it is important that we do not treat coordination problems and communication problems as if they were the same thing, or assume that the ability to communicate in degraded environments equals the ability to sufficiently coordinate. Degraded communications can make coordination even more difficult and preclude some types of coordination that may be critical to mission accomplishment, but even highly resilient communications cannot solve the fundamental coordination challenges that are fundamentally tied to the needs of the commander and the complexity of the mission.
Degrees of Interdependency
The exercise of Mission Command, or any delegation of authority and control, inherently depends on the ability of subordinate units to accomplish their missions with relative autonomy in terms of sustainment and internal control of their organic integral units of action. Delegated, or “distributed”, control is only feasible if the local commander can sufficiently control his or her own situation locally within the capabilities of his or her local C2 system without hitting a show-stopping constraint created by the requirement to have outside assistance or sustainment. This is a natural assumption in ground units that usually have self-contained sustainment and C2. Thus, Mission Command as a concept found its origins in the US Army, where individual commanders had the ability to be relatively self-sustained within a specific geographic area with their local reserve of logistics stores, assuming periodic resupply of consumables happened on a regular, recurring basis. But such autonomy is not typical in the air component, which carries little sustainment with it in the air, and typically uses the advantage of centralized C2 and logistics to provide air capabilities over the entire theater or AOR.
One of the unavoidable tradeoffs of delegation of control is the dilemma that the more that units are dependent on tight coordination and/or synchronization with other units for their ability to successfully accomplish their missions, the less flexible their operations can be, and the more important responsive C2 becomes. As an example, with the increasing effectiveness of “A2AD” countermeasures to traditional US strengths, a strike package of stealth aircraft must increasingly rely on mutual support from distributed planning shops, and on-call long range strike, ISR, electronic warfare, and various kinetic and nonkinetic enhancements in order to remain survivable in modern threat environments. They may also depend increasingly on centrally-managed air refueling support if they were forced to launch from long distances in the face of growing missile threats that make close-basing infeasible.
All of this coordination requires a common understanding of the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” described by the commander’s intent, mission statement, and operational concept – and this requires coordination by multiple C2 elements. As dependence on support assets grows, the risk of mission failure also grows if any of these supporting elements is not ready and available at the appointed place and time not only for planning, but also for execution. In both cases, coordination may be frustrated by local enemy actions that disrupt communications or other enemy physical actions that require mission slips or reroles to maintain package cohesion and timing.
Thus, the effectiveness of delegation is highly dependent on the nature of the mission, the degree of mutual support needed to accomplish it, and the ability of subordinate C2 systems to coordinate and synchronize the mutual support needed to execute the mission within acceptable levels of risk. This interdependence is called “coupling” in systems theory, and demonstrates the fragile nature of highly-interdependent variables in a complex system. Col Michael Kometer described the concept of coupling applied to command and control of airpower in this way:
"The degree of coupling can be a function of environmental factors or the enemy’s reactions, but it can also be influenced by the interaction among dynamic players. When there is a lot of coordination among different components and a lot of dynamic missions looking for new targets, there will be tight coupling. The actions of any one player could drastically affect the actions of the others, because the airspace is crowded and the actions of the aircrews must be coordinated with the actions of the ground troops. The fewer dynamic players and the less coordination, the less the players’ actions depend on each other and the looser the coupling. On one hand, having many dynamic missions helps get the weapons to the target; on the other hand, it also increases the degree to which people’s actions depend on each other [coupling] and makes the adjustment more complex."[5]
The principle of coupling establishes that structurally, there are inherent limits to what you can do with your forces if you cannot coordinate or communicate across the entire force – you may have to accept significant risks by pressing without all of your support assets, and you may have to build excess duplication and slack into the plan to make up for a lack of ability to “call an audible” once the plan is executed and some of your assumptions behind the plan prove false as the enemy or third parties react to it. But, by far, the greatest challenge comes when you can no longer receive the information you need to understand the situation and transmit new directives in response, i.e., the ability to coordinate and communicate.
Applying the Theory
Once we understand general theories of C2 and its inherent internal tradeoffs, we can tackle the practical questions of C2 in contested environments with more precision and depth. But there cannot be global answers intended to apply to all situations -- in conditions of complexity, blanket rules and technical solutions are far more likely to create negative unintended consequences than intended results, and this is further exacerbated if the challenges are not clearly defined or understood.
One of the mitigation strategies for the types of contested C2 environments that has been recently proposed is the concept of “distributed operations”, in which subordinate command nodes assume the duties of the central senior command node until that capability can be reconstituted. It has been suggested that distributed operations will be critical to “maintain the initiative” during HHQ disruptions, but, as discussed below, it is inherently dangerous to impose such a practice as a matter of policy without careful qualification. Just as going faster is not the right answer if you are going in the wrong direction, in many cases, “maintaining the initiative” may be worse than “taking a knee” in the case of an unexpected C2 disruption at higher command echelons. What authorities and what degree of control will be delegated should be carefully clarified before policy is established, and each situation will require a unique response.
Is “Distributed Operations” the Answer to Contested C2 challenges?
In order to answer this question, given the fundamentals outlined above, the following questions need to be answered before we can determine if distributed control is appropriate to continue the mission once the normal C2 system is disrupted. Designing technical solutions or concepts for Distributed Operations without first addressing these questions is unlikely to achieve desired results, and may actually exacerbate some of these problems.
Recommendations for Proactive Mitigation of Contested C2
Once you have determined the critical missions that must be accomplished in contested environments, and have defined the critical functions, integration, and coordination steps needed to carry out the commander’s concept, you can take proactive steps to guard the C2 capabilities that will make planning and execution possible.
Conclusion
It is impossible to foresee all future C2 challenges and scenarios in a competitive environment where our adversaries will actively seek to emphasize areas where we are weak, and avoid areas where we are strong. Because of this, our best bet against uncertainty is to ensure that C2 warriors understand the fundamental concepts that underlie C2 processes, including the inherent tensions and tradeoffs in any C2 system. They must understand the commander’s intent, have a sense of the constraints that the force must operate under, and understand what the commander defines as acceptable levels of risk for the mission in various situations. Staffs must understand what information commanders need, and what coordination needs to be done to carry out their intent. Tech is important, and processes can help to create internal stability in the face of C2 challenges, providing a common point of departure when the situation changes. But by far, the most important way to hedge against the challenges of contested C2 is to make sure people understand what the critical C2 processes are, and what they are designed to support. No matter what the situation is, well trained people grounded in the fundamental C2 concepts will creatively use whatever tools are still available to them to make the needed communication and coordination happen, and are your best insurance against the challenges of contested C2.
[1] Martin Van Creveld, Advanced Technology Concepts for Command and Control, ed. Alexander Kott (USA: Xlibris Corporation, 2001), 44.
[2] Martin Van Creveld, Advanced Technology Concepts for Command and Control, ed. Alexander Kott (USA: Xlibris Corporation, 2001), 27.
[3] Carl H. Builder, Steven C. Bankes, and Richard Nordin, Command Concepts: A Theory Derived from the Practice of Command and Control (Santa Monica: RAND), RAND.
[4] Clint Hinote, Centralized Control and Decentralized Execution: A Catchphrase in Crisis? (Maxwell AFB: Air University, Air Force Research Institute, 2009), 60, Air University Press, Research Paper 2009–1.
[5] Michael W. Kometer, Command in Air War: Centralized Versus Decentralized Control of Combat Airpower (Maxwell AFB: Air University Press, 2007), 74.