In providing commanders with the ability to command and control, computerised systems have been in use for more than 50 years. Their evolution from siloed systems inside individual units, moving across task forces, then to covering theatres has helped operators and HQ staffs orchestrate military means with increasing efficiency and lethality. The change in the last decade – according to Andrew Graham – has been in moving from enabling these domain-to-domain C2 structures to talk to each other, to one that has to integrate the data from each platform system to be seem by everyone else. Now that idea - based on an assumption of ubiquitous and constant connectivity - has evolved again. How can you operate a C2 system when to transmit data might spell certain death?

In providing commanders with the ability to command and control, computerised systems have been in use for more than 50 years. Their evolution from siloed systems inside individual units, moving across task forces, then to covering theatres has helped operators and HQ staffs orchestrate military means with increasing efficiency and lethality. The change in the last decade – according to Andrew Graham – has been in moving from enabling these domain-to-domain C2 structures to talk to each other, to one that has to integrate the data from each platform system to be seem by everyone else. Now that idea - based on an assumption of ubiquitous and constant connectivity - has evolved again. How can you operate a C2 system when to transmit data might spell certain death?

In providing commanders with the ability to command and control, computerised systems have been in use for more than 50 years. Their evolution from siloed systems inside individual units, moving across task forces, then to covering theatres has helped operators and HQ staffs orchestrate military means with increasing efficiency and lethality. The change in the last decade – according to Andrew Graham – has been in moving from enabling these domain-to-domain C2 structures to talk to each other, to one that has to integrate the data from each platform system to be seem by everyone else. Now that idea - based on an assumption of ubiquitous and constant connectivity - has evolved again. How can you operate a C2 system when to transmit data might spell certain death?

C2 Systems – how much has changed?

The Command and Control podcast breaks new ground in taking an independent and pragmatic look at what military command and control might look like for the fight tonight and the fight tomorrow. Join us as we talk through C2 for an era of high-end war fighting. The hypothesis is this: command is human, control has become more technological pronounced. As a result, the increasing availability of dynamic control measures is centralising control away from local command. It is a noticeable trend in Western C2 since the late 1980s. Over that time, blending human decision and cutting edge technology has been evolutionary but not deliberate: how will this change? Will it become dominated by a tendency to hoard power in those with the most computing power, might these factors serve to amplify the role of commanders? Given all the hyperbole about AI in C2 (and we will tackle some of that with AI experts), it's a conversation we need to have.

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C2 Systems – how much has changed?

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