1 © 2006 The Aerospace Corporation

Advanced Space C2

Russ Abbott, The Aerospace Corporation

Roberta Ewart, USAF/SMC

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Contents

• Command and control is

• Platforms enable … more platforms.

• Innovative organizations.

• How command intent is communicated and ensured?

• How responsibility and authority are assigned?

• How organizations communicate and operate?

• Centralized command — decentralized execution?

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What is command and control?

“The exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander [emphasis added] over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission.

“Command and control functions are performed through an arrangement of personnel, equipment, communications, facilities, and procedures employed by a commander in planning, directing, coordinating, and controlling forces and operations in the accomplishment of the mission.”

Department of Defense, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms

Assures accountability

Enables hierarchical

structure and control

Commander-centric

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No horizontal communication.No dashed lines. (Is that good?)

It’s not accurate as a communication or

operational structure.

It may represent how authority is delegated,and it may represent how responsibility is assigned,but it doesn’t represent how communication occurs

or how organizations really work.

Downward pointing arrows: commands.Upward pointing arrows: status reports.

Can be implemented with point-to-point communication links.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Command and Control

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What is Command and Control?

The future of command and control is not Command and Control.

In fact, the term Command and Control has become a significant impediment to progress.

Efforts have been made to (re)define this term in ways that would make it more relevant to 21st century organizations and endeavors.

Efforts to date, however, have not been able to overcome the deeply ingrained belief that the term Command and Control is synonymous with a specific approach, namely the way traditional military organizations are organized and operate.

The term thus has become unalterably frozen in time.

Dave Alberts, Director CCRP.“Agility, Focus, and Convergence: The Future of Command and Control,” The International C2 Journal, DoD/CCRP. April 2007.

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What is Command and Control?

For our purposes we will define command and control as

The structures and processes through which an organization operates.

The focus is on interaction among participants in the organization.

David Sloan Wilson,Evolution for Everyone

Everything is both an entity and a group.

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From point-to-point links to platforms

Need more than fixed point-to-point communication channels

The communication system(even if just a telephone system)

is the start of net-centricity

Must distinguish between communication structure and command hierarchy.

Becomes reified as an additional component—not

just a collection of interfaces.

“Platform”

But a network/platform does nothing on its own.

The fundamental question How will the organization use the network/platform?Enabling communication neither

eliminates responsibility nor undermines command intent.

As a common resource, where does it fit into the hierarchy?

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It’s all platforms

Telephone system

Voicemail

Television infrastructure

Television channel

Talk show

Internet

Email

Interest groups

WWW

Wikipedia Google maps Craig’s list eBay

storestoreMashups

SOA framework

Service

TV showTelemarketing

Service Service Service Service Service Service

Service Service Service Service Service Service Service

Television channel

Talk show Talk show

Politics

Civil society

Courts: dispute resolution Money and banking system

Free market economic system

Other infrastructure elements

Product Service

…

Movie marketing Politics

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Layered architectures — not functional decomposition

Presentation

Session

Transport

Network

Physical

WWW (HTML) — browsers + servers

Applications, e.g., email, IM, Wikipedia

Asymmetric warfare

Each layer is a platform that a) is built on the layers below itb) enables higher level layers

to be built on top of itc) is vulnerable to disruption.

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Platform service provider

Governance: platforms are not like most businesses

• Not a typical business product or service. • Does not combine components from suppliers

to make and sell a product for consumers. • Enables interaction. • Value depends on breadth of use.

• Often called a network effect.

Examples • Internet – WWW – GIG. • A credit card service.• A shopping center.• A dating service.

Whoever owns/runs/controls it, has users at their mercy.

Platform

Governance of common resources becomes a central issue.

Multi-sided platformA means, mechanism, or set of conventions that structure and

enable interaction among parties.

Owner’s and users’ priorities may not be compatible.

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Wise crowds

Web wise crowd platforms• Wikis• Mailing lists• Chat rooms• Prediction markets

(James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds) (Scott Page, The Difference)

Wise crowd criteria • Diverse: different skills and information brought to the table. • Decentralized and with independent participants:

• No one at the top dictates the crowd's answer. • Each person free to speak his/her own mind and make own decision.

• Distillation mechanism: to extract the essence of the crowd's wisdom.

Condorcet Jury Theorem (18th century) example• Five people (a small crowd).• Each person has a 75% chance of being right.• Probability that the majority will be right: ~90%

Traditional wise crowds• Teams• Juries• Democratic voting

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A wise crowd as assistant and companion

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Innovative environments

The Internet• The inspiration for net-centricity and the GIG• Goal: to bring the creativity of the internet to the DoD

What do

innovative environments

have in common?

What do

innovative environments

have in common?

Other innovative environments• The scientific and technological research process• The market economy• Biological evolution

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Innovative environments

To ensure innovation:

Innovation is always the result of an evolutionary process. • Random generation of new possibilities.• Selection of the good ones. (Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea)

How does this apply to organizations?

Sounds simple doesn’t it?

Creation and trial• Encourage the prolific generation and trial of new ideas.

Reaping the rewards of success• Allow new ideas to flourish or wither based on how well they do.

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Innovation in various environments

Initial fundingProspect of

failureApprovals

Reaping rewards

Biological evolution

Capitalism in the small.

Nature always experiments.

Most are failures, which means death. (But no choice given.)

None.

Bottom-up resource allocation

defines success.

EntrepreneurLittle needed

for an Internet experiment.

Perhaps some embarrassment, time, money; not

much more.

Few.

Entrepreneur wants rewards.

Bottom-up resource

allocation.

BureaucracyProposals,

competition, forms, etc.

Who wants a failure in his/her personnel file?

Far too many.

Managers have other priorities.

Top-down resource

allocation.

New ideas aren’t the problem.

Trying them out Reaping rewards

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To identify and adopt C2 frameworks that encourage hierarchical organizations to build platforms that enable wise crowds and facilitate innovation.

To identify and adopt C2 frameworks that encourage hierarchical organizations to build platforms that enable wise crowds and facilitate innovation.

Was there a message in that bottle?

The challenge

Hierarchy (command intent and responsibility) is not inconsistent

with net-centricity (platforms)

Hierarchy (top-down control) is a significant impediment to wise crowds and innovation.