At this point, it’s trite to say that the US spent the last 15 years focused on counterterrorism in the Middle East while China and Russia built up capabilities to counter the Pentagon — but being trite doesn’t mean it’s not true. As a result, we’ve become focused on exquisite platform and system-of-systems designs for individual domain supremacy, but not on improving our command and control (C2) capability, writes MITRE’s Scott Lee, Cross-Cutting Priority Lead, Joint All-Domain Command & Control.
If the US wants to keep ahead of Beijing and Moscow, we must eliminate the fixation on static plans, with their long decision timelines and approval processes and access to endless supplies. Dynamic operations must be the new normal, with the ability to operate when disrupted, distributed, and disaggregated when required.
Lee offers specific recommendations about how to apply both the art and science of C2 to future warfighting, and make the vision of better, faster decision-making across all domains a reality.