The Vice Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff has posed a deceptively simple question: How would we do things differently if we had DBK?
While the explosion of information and communications technologies has profoundly affected the basic structure and operations of some organizations, others, including DOD, have adapted in an incremental fashion. Yet to fully understand the implications that a vastly improved awareness of the situation could have on concepts of our defense posture -- including operations, command structures, forces structures, doctrine, training, weapon systems, and logistics -- we need to consider the possibility of revolutionary change and we need to build a mission-oriented DOD based on the opportunities afforded by technology -- in this instance, the opportunities afforded by achieving DBK. To do this we need to explore one important aspect of this challenge; how we might capitalize on the opportunities made possible by having a vastly improved capability of situation awareness by changing the way we approach command and control (C2).
This paper begins by laying out the terms of reference followed by an analysis of the overall impact that having this capability would have on U.S. Force Structure, Organization, and Doctrine and the role that C2 plays in determining these attributes of our defense posture. The historic role of C2 in warfare is then sketched in terms of how it contributes to the achievement of the fundamental principles of warfare. The C2 capabilities necessary to leverage fully these opportunities are then identified. Finally, the changes that need to be made to current approaches to command concepts, organizations, doctrine, and systems in order to exploit our improved knowledge of the situation are explored. The paper concludes that the potential benefits of achieving DBK are well worth pursuing and identifies a number of issues and action items to address and realize these benefits.
The impact that any improvement in our capabilities will have is a function of the particular mission and scenario at hand. As a baseline for the analysis, from which excursions in the form of sensitivity analyses can be taken, a Major Regional Contingency (MRC) with a regional power is considered. The horizon for the analysis is the year 2008. This is far enough out to achieve significant advances in capability as well to provide the time needed to adjust our doctrine and organization to take advantage of those advances.
The baseline case does not consider coalition warfare, which could significantly complicate C2. In addition, this analysis initially focuses on a combat mission unencumbered by tight political constraints of the type that have limited our ability to act in Bosnia.
Situation awareness has many different dimensions, and while given the time horizon and the nature of the resources likely to be available, "total" or perfect situation awareness is beyond our reach. Nevertheless, improvements in our capabilities well short of achieving total or perfect situation awareness could provide quantum improvements in our effectiveness. By 2008 we could achieve considerable improvements in our current ability to see and understand the battlefield. Our adversary, a regional power, will also be able to take advantage of some of the available technology, albeit not to the extent we will. Thus, the United States will continue to have "information dominance" in a notional 200 nm- square battlefield, maintaining or even increasing the edge we have over others. Information dominance would be of only academic interest, if we could not turn this information dominance into battlefield dominance.
The ability to approach total situation awareness and prevent our adversaries from achieving it, and our capability to exploit our relative advantage in information result in a situation in which we have achieved DBK.
Achieving DBK without being able to respond militarily to an adversary's moves is a nonstarter, so this paper analyzes a situation in which the united States can strike at virtually any target or a kill-at-will capability and establish a virtual link between any sensor and any weapon in near real time -- but not necessarily between all sensors and all weapons simultaneously. As with situation assessment, kill-at-will capability comes in varying degrees characterized mainly by Pk, the probability of kill, which in turn is a function of target latency and hardness; travel time or the amount of time it takes to put "ordinance" on target; and the accuracy of the delivery system. While post-kinetic weapons may reduce travel time to virtually zero and increase accuracy dramatically, significant delays associated with targeting and command decision processes associated with combat will remain. Thus, the tradeoffs between the quality of decisions and speed (addressed later) will remain a central issue for C2 for the foreseeable future.
As noted, situation awareness is multidimensional. It includes knowing the current position, classification, identity, condition, and recent history of all items of military significance on the battlefield (in the 200 nm square). It also can be said to include knowledge of the objectives, intentions, and plans of all players. Items of interest include "strategic" targets of both the conventional kind (e.g., factories) as well as the unconventional kind (e.g., financial networks). A baseline assumption for DBK is that we know, in near real time, the positions of all friendly, neutral, and enemy objects of interest; we have more limited information regarding their current conditions and recent histories; and we have somewhat less information about enemy intents and plans.
The information associated with DBK is assumed to be "corporate" knowledge -- that is, we collectively have this information. It is not assumed that this information is instantaneously available to everyone. If fact, figuring out how best to distribute elements of available information is a major challenge and will, to a large extent, drive our approach to C2.
Implicit in DBK and kill-at-will assumption is our possession of considerable stand off capability (for example, remotely piloted vehicles); few manned systems would be placed at risk. In fact, in the kind of warfare in which both sides have good situation assessment ability and relatively smart munitions, high value targets become extremely vulnerable unless this vulnerability is reduced by stealth or speed.
Finally, it is assumed that we are resource constrained. That is, weapons, logistics, communications, and computer processing are limited and need to be allocated and scheduled. In fact, in a very real sense, the problem boils down to resource allocation questions and our ability to make these investment decisions in ways that allow us to take full advantage of the opportunities that technology affords to defeat the enemy with minimum casualties, collateral damage, and time and resources expended.
A common analytical technique is to make some simplifying assumptions to "bound the problem" in an attempt to establish the feasibility of an approach or concept.
In this case, a gross feel for the potential value of DBK can be derived from looking
at the problem of destroying a given number of targets with different levels of C2
capability (figure 1). While the word destroy is used to simplify this discussion,
it should be understood that in reality a full range of actions, including exploitation,
co-option, disruption, and degradation need to be considered.
Figure 1
Potential Value of DBA
The worst case is when one has no C2 and weapons are free to fire on any target. In this case, unintentional, duplicative, and/or overlapping fire will result. Some targets will be "over killed" while others will escape unharmed. Given no C2 or what amounts to random targeting, there is also no ability to prioritize targets, which on the battlefield have widely differing values, values that change as the dynamics of the battle unfold. The values of targets are not limited to positive numbers; there are also numerous situations when targets may actually have negative values and thus need to be avoided rather than hit. Obvious cases include the sort of collateral damage that can be exploited for its propaganda value. Less obvious cases are situations in which killing a particular target sacrifices possible long-term benefits for short-term gains.
Given perfect C2 (which in turn is dependent on perfect information), an optimal allocation of weapons assignments can be made dynamically as a function of ordnance available, weapon capabilities (Pks), and target values. The result will be that high-value targets are destroyed with high probability; that valuable ordnance is not wasted on low value targets; and that targets with negative values are spared. The result will be that more operationally significant damage will be inflicted along with a more effective use of resources. The leverage of C2 grows as the effective Pks increase. Our current ability to do C2 falls in between these two extremes, and the value of achieving DBK is bounded by the spread between the line that represents our current ability and the line that represents perfect C2. The potential impact of DBK goes well beyond any tactical advantage associated with being able to destroy targets efficiently.
DBK, in providing us with an opportunity to hit the right targets at the right time, offers us an opportunity to change the way we organize, command, and equip our forces. It is the impact associated with these changes that will determine the ultimate value of having DBK.
Figure 2 illustrates the fragility of overreliance on DBK or indeed C2 at the expense of firepower. We be careful to build an organization with significant teeth, and if we choose to embark on a path that makes us heavily reliant on technology, we must also take steps to ensure that the systems that we will come to rely upon to give us DBK and C2 are designed to deliver appropriately high levels of reliability and availability. We will also need to deal with the possibility of technology failures or degraded capability, however rare they are projected to be, to ensure the success of our missions. The safety blanket of having force in depth to hedge against failures in systems may not be a viable approach given current budgetary trends.
Determining the role that a vastly improvement situation assessment capability can play in our defense posture is a part of the perennial debate regarding the proper balance between investments in C2 and other elements of our warfighting ability including manpower, readiness, high- and low-technology weapons, training, and education. Despite the growing consensus that additional investments in C2 will pay off handsomely, beyond some point it will be more than offset by reductions in force structure or readiness.
Figure 2
Limits of Command and Control
The remainder of this chapter develops a view of future C2 that evolves from the achievement of DBK. DBK represents a quantum leap from even our current level of capability, which is nevertheless formidable by historical standards. Therefore, it would be incorrect to simply extrapolate linearly from today's capability. This approach would also lead to incremental change that will not get us to the point where we could fully exploit the opportunities afforded by DBK. Put in another way, business as usual is not the answer. Incremental changes will not result in speediness or efficiency.
DBK provides an opportunity that can not be fully taken without turning to new command concepts and organizational approaches. Given the assumptions used in this analysis, command control will undergo change in a number of key ways. Commanders will be more focused on strategic issues; the role of staffs will be diminished; and, organizations will be flattened. New concepts of operations will be required to achieve the desired levels of target damage necessary for success and there will need to be associated changes in force structure, the mix of weapons, and the nature of logistics.
The reductions needed in response times (decision/execution cycle times) and the number of decisions that needed in high- intensity combat situations, all in a short time span, are beyond human capability. Fortunately, the changes brought about by DBK make automating a large subset of decisions a viable approach.
To follow the reasoning that led to these conclusions, we must start with a review of the objectives of C2 and how, over the years, we have attempted to improve our ability to plan and conduct warfare.
C2 exists only to facilitate the accomplishment of a mission. Its has no intrinsic value, rather its value derives from the contribution that it makes to mission success. A brief review of what C2 has traditionally sought to achieve and how it attempts to achieve it will provide a good foundation for understanding what will change with DBK.
C2 provides commanders and their staffs with the tools necessary to successfully operate in an environment clouded by the fog of war and uncertainty. This environment of "fog" and of uncertainty has profoundly influenced military thought and strategy throughout history. The principles of war are rooted in this fundamental characteristic of the battle field. Therefore, it should be of no surprise that the way the military is currently structured results, in large part, from a desire to minimize confusion and misunderstanding and to deal with uncertainty. Unity of command and appropriate span of control involve structural approaches to the problem, while approaches to the development and management of information have been process oriented. While much progress has been made in improving the C2 process, less attention has been focused on the structural or doctrinal aspects of C2.
Specifically, C2 and associated organizational structures, military tactics, procedures, and doctrine have sought to:
Given this way of looking at the objectives of C2, it is clear that what has become known as "information war," or IW, is intimately related to C2.
C2 has sometimes been confused with communications or information systems, and IW has sometimes been confused with electronic countermeasures. These misunderstandings are obstacles to progress and need to be addressed, because achieving DBK requires an full understanding of C2 and IW.
Command, control, communications, and intelligence systems (C3I) have been primarily concerned with reducing a commander's fog by attempting to provide a complete and accurate picture of the enemy and the environment, reports on the disposition and capability of friendly forces, and battle damage assessments. C3I systems have also been used to achieve timely and assured dissemination of information (and orders) and in achieving a common perception of both the situation and commands (missions, objectives, and tasks). With the addition of significant information processing power and decision aids, C3I systems have begun to support a capability for near real-time reassessment of the situation and continuous option development and analysis.
While C2 has long been considered an enabler necessary to help attain the goals contained in the often stated Principals of War, it has only been very recently that C2 has been seen as an offensive weapon. The essence of the offensive nature of C2 derives from its contribution to maintaining the offensive in classic terms. Maintaining the offensive involves the ability to dictate both the time and place of action.
The offensive nature of IW has long been understood, for IW both utilizes friendly C3I systems and targets enemy C3I systems. One of the greatest potential benefits of DBK is, in fact, the improved ability it provides to conduct IW. The ability to neutralize, disrupt, subvert, deceive, weaken, or fragment an enemy's offensive or defensive capability by taking actions against enemy commanders, staffs, and systems translates into a powerful offensive capability. When combined with a strategy to achieve option dominance, IW and C2 achieve their greatest synergism.
A key to achieving option dominance is being able to respond faster than one's adversary -- to always be one step ahead. Such an ability will permit us to co-opt enemy plans and actions before they can be effective. In order for us to achieve option dominance, three conditions or prerequisites must be met:
We must recognize what needs to be done. This involves a number of inter-related steps including the development of an understanding of the current situation and its implications, the generation of options to be considered, the analysis of these options, and, a command decision regarding what option will be taken.Having recognized what needs to be done, we need the ability to accomplish all this faster that it takes for the enemy to act (or react). This involves not only all the tasks implicit in recognizing what needs to be done, but also the time it takes to translate an option into understandable assignments, their transmittal to subordinates, and the time it takes to understand these directives and act upon them. It is important to realize that absolute speed is not the issue, rather is it the relative speed that is important. Thus, we gain as much from slowing down the enemy as we do in speeding up our C2. In fact, given the tradeoffs between absolute speed and quality, slowing down the enemy (via IW) carries with it some attractive benefits.We need to be more than a paper tiger. That is, we need the ability to actually execute the option selected.
Having DBK certainly is a very big part of recognizing what needs to be done. But by the same token it is not sufficient to achieve this first necessary step on the road to option dominance. Perhaps the most important missing ingredient is the need to develop an appropriate response to the situation as it is unfolding. This requires the creativity and insight that only an experienced commander can bring to the battlefield.
The very same technology necessary to achieve DBK, namely information and communications technologies, may make it possible for us to operate inside the enemy C2 cycle. But the ability to push piles of data around the battlefield is not sufficient to allow us to operate inside the enemy's decision and execution cycle. We need to be able to design a more streamlined process than we currently have to satisfy the time-critical nature of this task. (This is considered a little later on). The kill-at-will capability assumed for the baseline analysis completes the picture and allows us to take advantage of the information dominance we have achieved.
If option dominance can be achieved, and we can demonstrate this capability to potential adversaries, then we may be able to preempt enemy actions and hence prevent this kind of extremely costly combat from occurring. In effect, we would effectively change the nature of conventional war.
There are two major implications that the achievement of DBK has for our approach to C2. The first is that we will effectively move from a situation in which we are preoccupied with reducing the fog of war to the extent possible and with designing approaches needed to accommodate any residual fog that exists to a situation in which we are preoccupied with optimizing a response to a particular situation.
In short, we will move from a situation in which decisionmaking takes place under "uncertainty" or in the presence of incomplete and erroneously information, to a situation in which decisions are make with near "perfect" information.
Decisionmaking in the absence of complete and accurate information is far more difficult than decisionmaking with perfect information. Therefore, many of the ways we approach command today are a direct result of finding ways to come to grips with the task of timely decisionmaking in the absence of adequate information, under conditions of extreme stress, and where the cost of error may be extremely high. Professional military education (PME), doctrine, and organizational structures have all been tailored to deal with this problem. The result is to concentrate on what is called "max a min" solutions, that is, on those focusing on avoiding decisions with large downsize risks in favor of decisions which are "optimal" by expected value standards.
There are other implications as well. These include an emphasis on strategy and tactics that require keeping considerable forces and resources held in reserve to deal with the unknown or unexpected. While DBK certainly does not eliminate risk or uncertainty from command decisionmaking, it does radically alter the balance of the situation. Accordingly, those command concepts, doctrine, organizations, and force structures that have been optimized over time to deal with the fog of war need to revisited to see how they might be better adapted to the realities of DBK.
The second major implication of having DBK derives from the conditions that must obtain if we are to be able to take full advantage of the opportunities provided by having this capability. The utility of having DBK is a function of both the timeliness of the response and the our ability to make the most of limited resources. These two prerequisites for success frame the C2 issues we need to address. At issue is the way we will distribute information and decision making. Without a doubt, we will need to finally break the umbilical chord between the command chain and the flow of information.
DBK gives us the opportunity to hit movers, blunt offensives with "massed fire" rather than "massed forces," and achieve option dominance. The desire to take advantage of this opportunity provided by DBK drives us to minimizing the decision and execution cycle -- going from seeing a target to destroying one. "Destroying" as used here includes physical destruction or "hard" kill as well as interruption, neutralization, and other aspects of "soft" kill.
Running counter to this need for speed is the need for optimal resource allocation. Resource allocation is needed to ensure that the fire power available during a given period of time is allocated to targets with the highest priority (value) at that time. Resource allocation is also necessary to keep the costs of supplies and lift capability as low as possible. Thus, the desire to get ordnance on target rapidly comes into conflict with this need to efficiently and effectively allocate resources. This translates into C2 architectural tradeoffs.
To minimize the decision/execution cycle, the path from the sensor to the shooter needs to be minimized -- if possible, to go directly from the sensor to the shooter. However, to make best utilization of resources, allocations needs to be made "globally,þ that is, over the entire battle space and in the context of an appropriate period of time. Thus, the decisionmaking process required to allocate resources needs to be able to "see the big picture" in order to determine overall priorities and the consequences of various allocations. Central to the future of C2 will be the nature of the tradeoffs made with respect to distributing information and decisionmaking.
The best way to distribute decisionmaking and information on the battlefield is, of course, a function of the mission, scenario, technical capabilities, and cost. However, we can be reasonably certain that, in the time frame for this analysis, that neither a completely centralized nor a completely distributed approach will be best. Why? First, providing DBK to all shooters would require prohibitively high bandwidth and hence cost. Second, hierarchical flows of information would be too slow to achieve the decision and execution cycle times necessary to maintain option dominance. Therefore, an inventive mix of horizontal and vertical information flows as well as a new approach to decision making will be required.
In terms of getting the right information to shooters in a timely fashion, the challenge will be to dynamically manage the flow of information from sensors to shooters along with targeting priorities and ROEs. This will involve a highly automated capability to establish virtual links (sessions) between selected sensors and weapons. These sessions would need to be dynamically managed in accordance with battle events and priorities. Here, again, a key tradeoff will need to be made; this time it boils down to a tradeoff between optimization with centralized control v. less than optimal allocations with distributed control.
Given the enormous complexity of the battlefield at the level of granularity of control needed for real-time targeting and prioritization, ways to effectively decompose a battlefield need to be explored. Creating what might be called "Information/Resource Spheres" seems to be a promising approach. The concept of decomposing the battlefield into information/ resource spheres is designed to create manageable "areas" in which the distribution of information and decisions can be optimally distributed dynamically. These "areas" may not be solely geographically based. Each information/ resource sphere would contain all the information necessary for DBK within the sphere. Spheres would operate asynchronously. Forces within the sphere would need to be able to operate seamlessly, "organically joint" or integrated so that all communications, doctrine, and procedures worked together transparently. Each sphere needs a single commander who has command over all forces and resources necessary to counter the threat within the sphere. The creation of information/resource spheres is, in effect, a means to distribute workload in a way that tries to keep suboptimization to a minimum. Using spheres requires, of course, that an overall commander create spheres, collapse spheres, assign missions, ROEs, priorities, and resources to spheres and monitor their progress and situations.
As noted, DBK moves us into a world where many decisions can be made with something approaching perfect information. Not only are these decisions far easier for humans to handle quickly while under stress, but these types of decisions become more like mathematical problems that are truly a "piece of cake" for computers running sophisticated applications software to handle.
Computers do some things "better" than humans. Making "routine" decisions with near perfect information rapidly is one of those things. Given the very large number of decisions that will need to be made in near real time and the massive amounts of information that will need to be processed to support these decisions, not only can computers do the job, but computers are the only way the job can be accomplished.
Rather than diminishing the role or importance of the commander, the delegation of these decisions to computers (really "expert systems" that have been designed and tested by military experts) actually frees up the commander to devoted more energy to strategic issues and concerns. As a result, commanders will be able to concentrate their efforts on establishing mission objectives and priorities and in balancing assignments and resources. Perhaps even more importantly, it frees commander to devote attention to developing possible courses of action for consideration, a task that requires the creativity and experience that only they can bring to the battle.
The role of staffs will significantly diminish, however, provided that adequate processing power is available and appropriate expert systems have been developed and tested. Because many of the detailed tactical or logistical decisions will become automated, staffs will not be needed nearly to the extent they are now. There are some rather nice side effects to this consequence. First, the fog that is generated by staffs will be much reduced, and second, communications and processing resources utilized by staffs will also be reduced.
While by 2008 we will not yet be able to fully exploit the opportunities that are provided by DBK, we will be considerably down the road toward this objective. The edge of the envelope of C2 -- the C2 that makes optimal use of DBK -- while not achievable by 2008, is nevertheless instructive to imagine, providing us with a vision of the direction in which we are headed. This vision will not only help to focus our attention in broad terms on where we are going but will also enable us to see if there are unintended consequences or dangers associated with taking this path that need to be worked.
DBK and the technology associated with the achievement of DBK will permit commanders to operate in the "Nintendo" style. With the view of the battlefield and resources literally at one's fingertips, a command will be able to, at the click of a mouse, obtain different views of the battlespace (varying in their focus and granularity) in order to be able to develop an assessment of the situation and in turn develop options. The commander will be able to explore the likely outcomes of various options and upon deciding on a particular course of action have the decision translated into appropriate orders and communicated to subordinates. If the tempo of the battlefield permits, or if the sensitivity or importance of a particular aspect of the conflict warrants the commander's personal attention, a commander would have the ability to manage at a micro level as well. The operational and tactical levels of command would therefore be compressed into one in the "command console" and the systems that support it. To support this edge of the envelope C2, a number of automated capabilities would need to exist:
A commander of the future would also be able to, with the help of automated decision aids, discompose the battle space into spheres that automatically parse mission assignments and objectives, as well as information and resources, in an appropriate fashion.
Having DBK would have a dramatic impact on the way we approach C2. The role of commanders would be enhanced in a number of ways:
Organizationally, hierarchies will flatten to facilitate the flow of information and decisions while the role of staffs will be greatly diminished, their work being largely automated. Further, there will be an increased premium on interoperability to ensure that we get the greatest utility out of our resources. Technically, we will shift the emphasis from a reliance on bandwidth to communications connectivity and processing power and be increasingly dependant on "intelligent" software.
The changes in both C2 and in the form of warfare as we would prosecute it promise considerable economies. This leads to the conclusion that the investment necessary to move towards DBK is worth very serious consideration within DOD. The investment required is more than just R&D funds or system procurement dollars. It also involves a commitment to the kind of change in our organizational structures and doctrine that will allow us to both take advantage of the opportunities afforded by having DBK and the economics that are associated with a new approach to C2.