C2 and Peacekeeping
Command and Control
Peace keeping missions (whether peace enforcement, peace building, peace making, or conflict prevention) are very different to the formatted hierarchy and organisation of set-piece, large-scale military missions which Western allies have been accustomed to over the past decade. Even the experiences of ISAF or Iraq are outliers rather than a standardised format replicable across peace keeping tasks. This is also evident in the C2 of these missions: often more complex, ambiguous, woolly, and confusing than most military officers will be accustomed to. And that’s without bringing in a strategic...
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Professionals Talk Logistics
Command and Control
The key principles of logistics might not have changed (Jomini’s principles remain as valid as ever), but we have been lulled into false sense of adequacy about logistics and war. Steve Leonard and Jon Klug delve into how protracted wars make command conversations about logistics and supply different. The honest advice from the G4 might not always be appreciated but husbanding resources for a long-war is something commanders need to hear, and probably don’t get from elsewhere. War-gaming might help but when these exercises are limited by time and training outcomes, the realities and...
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Ukrainian C2: Adaptation under fire
Command and Control
The announcement in February 2025 of a restructuring of Ukrainian command and control went largely unnoticed in the West. It shouldn’t have: the implications are significant. Mick Ryan provides some much-needed illumination and insight into what this means, why it came about, some of the challenges and opportunities that may result, and whether lessons are immediately transferrable. Training and selecting commanders is a critical enabler to making this all work, and Mick recalls some of the syllabus from his time at the USMC School of Advanced Warfighting to give us a flavour of how...
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CIMIC and C2
Command and Control
Everyone understands that civil agencies and institutions do not operate in the same way as military organisations. The culture, aims, objectives, and funding models are different, as is the way they run activity. So when militaries and these agencies interact, a sense of friction and misunderstanding often emerges. A small group of military staff stand between the behemoths of civil and military leaders – the CIMIC staff; it is their understanding of both sets of cultures that smooths activity in the 97% of military activity that is not combat operations. Kathleen Porath, academic advisor...
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Nuclear Command and Control
Command and Control
It’s not a topic that is spoken about enough in the national security community: Nuclear Command and Control (NC2), and Communications (NC3) is a world apart from C2 for conventional forces: it underpins strategic stability between nuclear armed states. With the emergence of a ‘3-body problem’ in Great Power Competition, there is a risk that Western leaders (political and military) simply try and transpose Cold War theories onto the problems of today, and add some AI/ML to make it look pretty. Professor Andrew Reddie from the Berkeley Goldman School at the University of California,...
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C2, MDO and Synchronisation
Command and Control
Fast reflections of the annual NATO C2 Centre of Excellence (C2COE) conference in the Hague with the centre’s commanding officer, Meitta Groeneveld. The challenging issues of MDO and Synchronisation, and the implications of that doctrine on command and control, were the conference’s planned themes. We ended up in a conversation about the Cross Domain Command Concept, data and the human, the need to share, the lessons from Ukraine on C2 about adaptation of C2, the community of interest (the “we”), the political (and societal) will to change, the journey towards and beyond C2 in MDO, and...
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Horrid Bosses
Command and Control
The military sometimes promote and appoint leaders who are truly terrible. Sometimes this isn’t their fault, they are not always narcissistic or toxic: sometimes they are just not up to the job. But the issue for staffs is how to handle poor leaders. Professor William Scott Jackson from Oxford University is perhaps the foremost researcher in this field, and he brings with him a wealth of experience and lessons from the private and commercial world – much of it translates into the military world without much imagination. In this episode he talks about succession management, micro solutions...
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Synchronisation as Coupling
Command and Control
If there is some unresolved tension in the ideas of mission command and synchronisation – particularly within the MDO concept – then it could be more useful to think about the USMC idea of Coupling: the idea of providing linkage between warfare activities that are needed for to meet the task and/or mission. Instead of simply connecting everything because it’s possible, the Corps advocates for an approach that provides the means on a case-by-case basis. Interestingly, it is explained best in MCDP5 (USMC Planning) penned back in 1997, and signed off by the legend who is General Charles C....
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Submarine Command and Control
Command and Control
Imagine sitting on a battlefield and trying to figure out what is happening with only your ears to guide you; your guidance is based on orders written weeks or months ago, and the last time you got an update of where your own forces where was a day old (at best). That, in essence, is submarine warfare. There is no constant information flow for situational awareness and communication (of any kind) endangers your existence; so submarine commanders are required to make decisions based on a series of assumptions about a myriad of variables and use their experience, judgement, advice from their...
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The Civ/Mil part from a NATO SecGen
Command and Control
Former NATO Sec Gen Jaap de Hoop Scheffer talks about what it takes to make effective command relationships work at the highest level of Pol/Mil C2: the tensions between domestic agendas and international obligations, decision-making in NATO, and how to achieve coherence and agreement in matters of war. The conclusion, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that the level of co-operation between politicians and their military counterparts is not something that can be scripted or forced: it depends more on personalities, behaviours, and shared interests than on orders and formal hierarchies. Reflecting on...
info_outlineIn 2019, the Chiefs of Staff of the US military determined that C2 really had to adapt. The decision came after the publication of a report on Russian C2 and counter C2 capabilities: on that basis, the programme on Joint All Domain C2 was initiated. Currently, the US is spending between $1-2BN per year on it, having scoped it and pushed it forward with remarkable speed. It is progressing rapidly through the experimentation phase but has shifted shape over 5 years – moving from a plan to enable the Joint Force Commander with a long screwdriver to something that enables a more dynamic and rapid kill chain. As Rafael Lopez tells us, it may still suffer from “Principle Agent Problems”, but the future looks pretty bright.