Improving the Agility of the Current Defence Industry and Forces Value Stream in Acquiring and Generating Capabilities

Is the current Defence Industry and Defence Forces Relationship agile enough to address the volatile arms–counterarms evolution emerging in the Russian-Ukrainian war? 

Is the current Defence supply chain capable of delivering continuous integration of a software-defined military system of systems? Will the Defence Industry meet the European Defence Forces' expectations for 4th industrial cyber-physical products and services? Is Europe coherent enough to engage the Russian 2/3rd industrial force in an attrition war with inevitable human casualties? Questions that military strategists are pondering nowadays.

Figure 1: A high-level illustration of the value stream for legacy defence capabilities life cycle

With its war budget and legislation, Russia is building up its second industrial generation capabilities to produce armoured platforms, artillery, missiles, and ammunition, in addition to sourcing them from China and North Korea. Meanwhile, they are learning to use dual-use cyber-physical products sourced from China and Iran, such as Unmanned Aerial Systems, to deliver precision attacks and maintain 24/7 surveillance over the battlefield.  

Meanwhile, Ukraine relies heavily on conventional armaments, which are primarily supplied by NATO countries, albeit sporadically and subject to political constraints. While NATO countries are struggling to rebuild their Second Industrial generation manufacturing capabilities, Ukraine is building its 4th industrial capability  to provide dual-use cyber-physical platforms for both sensing and effect.  Partially, because the Western legacy weapon systems do not survive on the Ukrainian battlefield. 

Where does the European Defence Industry migrate from its current 3rd industrial capability to manufacture expensive platforms and precision missiles? How are the European Defence Forces utilising their strengths differently for transformation under the Russian hybrid operations? Will the European industrial and military value stream transform through:

1. Improving gradually the current processes and the operation model,
2. Accelerating towards 4th industrial software-defined armament utilisation, or
3. Fast-lining to acquire mass-produced, dual-use, cyber-physical platforms and adjust/configure/integrate them for military use.

First, the paper analyses the common bottlenecks along the current life cycle of armament from innovation to force utilisation. Secondly, the paper proposes three different lines of operation to improve agility, accelerate the life cycle updates and configuration, or connect the defence value chain more efficiently to meet the evident Russian threat.

Legacy Armament Life Cycle Model

The contemporary European ecosystem between the Defence Industry and Defence Forces is optimised for 2/3 generation industrial armament manufacturing and utilisation, optimising the long lifespan of platforms (main battle tanks, fighters, frigates) and complying with legislation for commercial procurement with a flavour for national security interests. The management of platform-centric life cycles suffers from three bottlenecks, though the value stream from innovation to battlefield and creating a strategic advantage in National Defence:

1. Valley of Death lies between ideation and experimentation, and manufacturers' intentions to create a viable product. Ideas, demonstrations, and proof of concepts often struggle to transition to pre-production and secure investments, ultimately becoming workable products with potential markets and profits. 
2. Valley of Death resides between vendors marketing/sales and the Defence Forces procurement. Commercial or armament-specific procurement regulation defines the behaviour between vendors and procurers in the market.  Requirements-based acquisition may inflate expectations beyond what any product in the market can deliver.  While minimising the ambiguity, both the military and industry tend to produce generations of similar fighting platforms. 
3. Valley of Death resides between the Defence Forces' force generation and force utilisation. Whilst integration and training may be successful, the platform appears not to be feasible in the battlefield or type of operation, or an element does not meet the requirements of the entire system of systems. For example, maintaining the Leopard 2 main battle tanks in the Ukrainian theatre .

Figure 2: Model for legacy value stream for military capabilities generation

The linear value stream requires both strategic support and a feedback loop to maintain the track towards integration and sustainment of armament. 

• Strategic direction is required through the life cycle of innovation, particularly in mitigating the bottlenecks in the chain of Ideating, Acquisition, and Utilisation. Whether this support and guidance is provided through governance, market regulation, or a hybrid manner is a question. Often, the ministerial strategic guidance is perceived as contradicting the legislation of the open market.

• A feedback loop is required to translate the lessons captured in operation, training and manufacturing to mid-life updates of platforms. Successful communication via the loop is based on trust, transparency, confidentiality, a shared knowledge base, and measurement for impact. As usual, communication fails to have a lasting effect on adjusting products and processes to meet military demand.

The legacy life-cycle value stream may work with platforms that have a lifespan of over 30 years and are loosely integrated, with operations mostly manual. The legacy model is not sufficient when the Russian defence industry has already gained a few years' advantage over the European defence industry.  The following sections study three ways to improve the agility of the legacy acquisition and life cycle management process.

 

Ways to Improve the Agility of Contemporary Acquisition Processes and Operation Model

When choosing to evolve the current 3rd industrial acquisition value stream gradually, both Defence Forces and Industry may enhance the performance and agility of the value stream in the following ways:

Strategic guidance

• National Defence Science and Technology strategies that guide resources, potential technology focuses and research awards
• Government-driven strategic direction through innovation incubators, governance of military industries, and 5-year military investment plans
• Market-driven direction with long-term military acquisition lists and capability requirements, calling manufacturers and products to Defence Exhibitions for information sharing
• Examples: US National Defense Science & Technology Strategy 2023 

Creating and maturing ideas:

• Seeding the ideation and R&D with incubators or innovation hubs, 
• Bringing potential competencies together in hackathons or competitions, 
• Incubating and maturing potential ideas towards Proof of Concepts (PoC)
• Expressing a long-term commitment to the most viable PoCs.
• Examples: US DARPA , NATO Science and Technology Organisation, NATO innovation accelerator (DIANA)  and Multinational Experience (MNE) , UAE Innovation Incubators, FIN eAlliance , FIN DEFINE 

Acquisition:

• Capability portfolio management to coordinate the development of new capabilities and decommissioning the legacy while meeting the evolving capabilities of potential adversaries with a 30-year horizon.
• Guiding the Defence Industry to invest in new technologies and manufacturing methods in preparation for new products with strategic partnerships
• Target Enterprise Architecture to guide the integration and system of systems performance
• Create Defence Industry clusters or partnerships to eliminate parallel product lines, increase specialisation, and the ability to integrate system of military systems. 
• Examples: UAE IDEX , KSA World Defense Show , KSA GAMI/SAMI ,  Nordic Patria-Nammo-Kongsberg partnership 

Utilisation:

• Multi-geared Force planning to develop, integrate, train and deploy troops at a pace and quality that addresses the operational requirements and crisis escalation
• Blue and Red Force exercises to find vulnerabilities for mitigation.
• Force sustainment to maintain, repair and restore troops and capabilities in operation
• Examples: NATO Combined Endeavour 

Feedback loop

• Annual cooperation and lessons identified sessions between the military and industry
• Having key account managers visiting exercises
• Manufacturers' user groups
• Examples: US Project Convergence, NATO Multi-national Experience, Systematic user group for Sitaware Battle management system development, US Space Command integration of operations and R&D 

The above improvement enhances the legacy process but does not meet the contemporary requirements of the theatre. The next section studies a software-defined value stream for military defence capabilities.

 

Generating Software-Defined or Driven Military Capabilities

The software-defined capabilities have been evolving for the past 15-20 years in civilian systems and are gradually being adopted in military-grade platforms and systems.  Software-defined radios (SDR), antennas (SDA) ,  networks (SDN) and virtual computers/infrastructure (SDI)  are widely used in military C5ISTAR systems. Later fourth-generation fighters  are fly-by-wire controlled and equipped with fire-and-forget missiles . Air Defence systems have been computer-controlled and are currently receiving over-the-air software updates while in mission.  The US DoD has a concept for a military Internet of Things composed of autonomous systems and a combination of weapon systems networked together.  

Software-defined, virtualised, or cognitive  features are primarily coded in programs, and changing the program also changes the effect or features of the armament. This opens two opportunities for agile or adaptable military systems: 

1. Algorithm development and continuous integration (CI) of new software and configurations can respond more quickly to battlefield changes than contemporary mechanically defined platforms. After a software update, a MIMO phased-array surveillance  radar may operate on a different frequency band and modify its beamforming and RF features to avoid being identified as a military radar.
2. A variety of sensors and effectors can be connected to a software-defined network, which enables faster target acquisition and combined fires against the target. A cognitive network with edge processing capacity can accelerate the BLUE OODA-loop, making it quicker than RED, which will ultimately gain victory, at least in a long game. 

The acquisition and generation of software-defined military capabilities need a different value-creating chain than the legacy armament. Figure 3 illustrates the separation of software (SW) and hardware (HW) supply chains with specialised features for:

• Sourcing from open code or algorithm pools and using public development environments to engage smaller and more specialised developers.
• Using agile methods to create software-defined features in products. Typically, the development windows (sprints) vary from a few weeks to some months. Hence, the span from idea to implementation is remarkably shorter than in a legacy value stream.
• Continuous integration (CI) ensures essential coherence and quality before the feature is introduced in force generation.
• Shorter feedback loops from integration, generation and utilisation to collect lessons and improve/correct features in the following iterations.
• More standard, mass-produced hardware that is operated by software that makes the difference in sensitivity, range, manoeuvrability, or effect at the tactical level.
• The governance of the value stream should be based on strategic partnerships for software development and integration, which uses as much as possible open-source code. Naturally, the military hardware still needs conventional procurement from the market.

Figure 3: A view of the software-defined capabilities value stream

The software-defined military capability requires long-term software development partnerships or a remarkable investment in a military in-house software development cadre, while actively using the value produced in an open-source society.  Furthermore, the hardware (platforms, weapons, sensors) needs to be digitised, more standard, and support the virtualisation of features. Software portability from one hardware platform to another, or integration with open application programming interfaces (APIs), becomes a significant threshold for the cost efficiency of the value stream. Naturally, the current manufacturers of bespoke platforms with closed licenses are opposing the model. 

There are several ongoing initiatives in the Armed Forces to improve their capability and transfer the value stream, for example:

• US DoD runs Project Convergence  to experiment with artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, enhance network cognition, and build defence capabilities for their cyber and electromagnetic space.
• The Land Command of Finland has been developing their Model 18 C5ISTAR system since 2010 with software-defined features and bi-annual development cycles. 
• US DoD has ordered a “comprehensive transformation”  of the US Army, utilising emerging technologies, integrating separate organisations to develop new capabilities, and transitioning to agile funding to build or acquire emerging opportunities. 

Consumer market, dual-use, military-specific, cyber-physical product/elements acquisition and integration

A more flexible acquisition model that would recover faster from battlefield surprise would be to utilise multiple sources (Government of the Shelf, Military of the Shelf, Commercial of the Shelf, In-house developed, and Strategic partnerships) to experiment, develop/manufacture, integrate, and generate. The model introduces a dual-use product line that sources from global consumer markets, integrates feasible parts into the military system of systems, and trains troops before rolling out capabilities to the theatre, as illustrated in Figure 4:

• Armed Forces pushes their experimentation closer to ideation by hosting hackathons, competitions or challenges. The winning concepts, prototypes or models will be awarded a development contract and hosted either in the software, defence, or civilian industrial chain.
• Continuous integration extends to include dual-use products that have shorter lifespans but can be acquired in vast quantities from the global supply chains. 

Figure 4: A view of the multi-sourced capabilities value stream

The multi-sourced model can be adjusted to meet the special requirements of each theatre if the force generation is also specialised. The adaptive military capability acquisition and generation model should address the current requirements on the Ukrainian battlefield  while also embracing the 4th Industrial Revolution, where manufacturing is brought to the theatre, as permitted by the threat environment. 

Instead of aiming for full operational capabilities with lengthened storage life, this model produces minimum viable products  that may mature through the integration and generation phases, ultimately achieving sufficient maturity for the battlefield. Naturally, the digital twin of the military system of systems  helps test how new elements integrate into the defence entirety, identify potential vulnerabilities, and determine the consequences of failure. 

MULTI-DOMAIN APPROACH FOR ADVANTAGE IN CONFRONTATION AND CONFLICT

 Bottom Line Up First

U.S. DoD and NATO aim to build Multi-Domain Operation capabilities after successfully deploying Joint Operation capabilities during Desert Storm 1991. The chosen approach seems a logical and natural next step from a force and defence industry viewpoint. Unfortunately, from an adversary viewpoint, the best Armed Forces with Multi-Domain Operations capability constrained by the perception of war and peace is vulnerable to flanking manoeuvre through information, cognitive and social realms. A textbook example of Sun Tzu's lesson is "To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."

Striving after Multi-Domain Operations Capabilities

The U.S. DoD has been developing the concept of Joint Operations since the Goldwater-Nichols Act 1986 and used it masterly in Desert Storm 1991 so well that at least the Chinese PLA launched their reform.  

Contemporary militaries are evolving their operational concept from Joint Operations towards Multi-Domain Operations. NATO defines the approach as the "push for NATO to orchestrate military activities across all operating domains and environments. These actions are synchronised with non-military activities and enable the Alliance to create desired outcomes at the right time and place." The Domains NATO names as "Maritime, Land, Air, Space and Cyberspace".  

 Figure 1: A Poster of Multi-Domain Operations Symposium, AUSA 2024 © Greater Los Angeles Chapter Association of the U.S. Army

The U.S. DoD's next step in evolution is called Joint All Domain Operations. "JADO shifts the focus from 'multi-domain', which individual services have been operating in for decades, and places it back on tackling the challenges of joint operations."   The U.S. aims at a combined, connected  arms (without the Service structure) force that senses and effects as one through all domains and can host combined units from other nations. The concept has also been called "Mosaic warfare". It is enabled by the emerging technology experimented on in The Project Convergence exercises . DARPA is promoting mosaic warfare as "combining weapons we already have today in new and surprising ways, introducing manned-unmanned teaming, disaggregating capabilities, and allowing commanders to seamlessly call on effects from sea, land or air depending on the situation and no matter which of the armed services is providing the capability." 

Where did We Come and Where to Go with Multi-Domain

The Multi-Domain concept is not new. Guderian joined close air support from the Luftwaffe with his Pantzer-formations since horse-towed artillery was too slow to support mechanised armies.  The electromagnetic environment has been an established fighting domain since the introduction of radars, navigation and radio during the II WWW.  The U.S. DoD has been coordinating three Services capabilities towards one Joint objective.  With the spreading of the Internet, the cyber environment has become a viable avenue, first for espionage  and later for attacks like the Russian attack against Estonia in 2007  and the U.S.-led coalition Stuxnet attack against Iran in 2010 . Currently, at least the UK MOD and U.S. Army are promoting the doctrine of Cyber and Electromagnetic Activities as combined arms effects.  

Space has been used to support military capabilities since the Gold War. After the development of anti-satellite weapons and their testing since 1958, Space has become a battlefield.  See the evolutionary path illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Evolution of domains in military conflict

Multi-Domain or Joint, All Domain Operational capabilities are in a linear evolutionary path for the Armed Forces to aim. Furthermore, the defence industry is promoting technologies enabling connectivity, plug-and-play integration of platforms, and automation for faster reaction, robust survivability, and combined effects from all domains.  

In the future, the strategic advantage will be based on improved connectivity, faster OODA-loop, and combined effect over the entire adversary system. Does everybody follow the evolutionary rules or play the same game?

How is the Multi-Domain Approach Doing in the Contemporary Continuum of Conflict?

Since the 2010s, the U.S. military planners have recognised the continuum of conflict from low to high intensity  rather than black-and-white peace and wartime in the Westphalian system . Continuum models illustrate a variety of dimensions along the line of cooperation – competition – confrontation – conflict, including non-state, hybrid and state conflicts or narrative, a zero-sum and non-zero-sum in Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning 2018.  Militaries globally have been studying how to engage U.S. Military Power with other means and ways, as stated by Hoffman and Mattis 2005: 

"Our conventional superiority creates a compelling logic for states and non-state actors to move out of the traditional mode of war and seek some niche capability or some unexpected combination of technologies and tactics to gain an advantage."

The Chinese (PRC) PLA's recognition and understanding of the current form of war is one of "informatisation" and "intelligentization", where battlefield dominance is achieved through information technology and networked forces, increasingly assisted by automation and artificial intelligence.  They see that patterns of warfare have changed from attrition-based warfare (although the fact in Ukraine)  patterns carried out at the front to information firepower strikes and network-electronic integrated confrontations that occur throughout the battlefield or even globally. The PLA concept of operations includes three lines:

1. "Collective operations refers to the need to develop a range of interconnected operational systems that can work cooperatively, coordinate the combination of military and non-military measures outlined above, and achieve the PRC's desired war outcomes."  Possibly, the PLA's definition of the Multi-Domain Operations concept.
2. "Asymmetric strikes are enabled by a thorough understanding of the enemy's operational system and focused on attacking key vulnerabilities, weakening the enemy's operational strength, capabilities, and potential by applying resources as efficiently as possible."  Possibly refers to ways to project power other than through contemporary military domains.
3. "Paralysing the enemy's systems centres the tailored application of force to reduce key areas of an enemy's functionality and gain initiative and control of battlefield developments."   It possibly indicates more innovative avenues of effect and centres of gravity.

These three lines of operation are combined with "war control",  which may refer to controlling the scope, scale, and pace of war.

The PRC also has a more holistic view of the competition over Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economy, Technology, Infrastructure and International relationships through the Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, and the Global Security Initiative.  Beijing is pursuing "efforts short of armed conflict by expanding coercion to new fronts, violating principles of sovereignty, exploiting ambiguity, and deliberately blurring the lines between civil and military goals", as described in the U.S. National Defense Strategy of 2018. 

Russia, on the other hand, was relatively successful in launching operations in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and Middle Africa, manoeuvring within the continuum without crossing the red line of war. Only the 2022 intention to launch a coordinated "blitzkrieg" to capture Kyiv and change the government exposed their main incapability at strategic, operational and tactical levels of warfare.  Nevertheless, the Russian ability to wage information operations  supported by cyber-attacks  and salvos of hundreds of missiles and drones are impacting NATO and Ukrainian political decision-making and structures.

Russia has long been preparing the foundation for their influence operation among domestic and European populations. After the first three months of Russian "Special Operation", some Ukrainians still believed in the de-Nazification of Kyiv.   Over 2.5 years of war, the majority of Greece, Bulgaria, and Italy citizens do not want to send more weapons to help Ukraine win.  Most of the citizens of Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria do not perceive Russia as a threat.  Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, and Serbia are torn between Russian influence and willingness to become members of the European Community. 

It appears that all countries and militaries are not capable or willing to follow the Multi-Domain competition but play a different game around the military strong points. While Western militaries are building Joint Multi-Domain capabilities in physical and cyber realms, China and Russia are joining their efforts over cyber and information realms to bypass the Multi-Domain militaries waiting behind the war threshold and target both political and population cognitive and social structures with information and kinetic means for terror. 

Figure 3 illustrates the confrontation between two entities. BLUE is an open society and economy with 4th industrial supporting advanced military force but constrained by Westphalian Peace-War definitions. RED is projecting its power more flexibly through the entire spectrum of realms: Physical, information, Cognitive and Social without breaching the line of  War. RED operates in the information realm, using available channels to plant perceptions, beliefs and memes in the cognitive sphere (human perception).  The planting is harvested at the social level where opposing sides spread xenophobia, media bubbles are enforced, and wildly spreading memes are faster than any truth. Cyber attacks and physical destruction support the main information operation of the critical infrastructure in the physical realm.  The RED Multi-Domain approach differs from BLUE militaries space, air, land, sea and cyber. The Jointness of RED hybrid operations is created by controlling information operations, cyber operations and kinetic actions of criminals and terrorists. The Joint impact is multiplied in BLUE media channels, affecting BLUE political and public opinion. The War Control targets soft spots, triggers a small impact and lets the adversary system multiply its effect. It sounds like Sun Tzu's optimum strategy to win the battle without fighting. 

 

Figure 3: Difference of the game between some countries DIME power projection

It may be wise for the Western Armed Forces to consider more of the Total National Defence (Totalförsvaret  in Sweden and Kokonaismaanpuolustus  in Finland) besides getting finally rid of the legacy boundaries of different Services on the battlefield.

References:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1560-1.html

https://www.act.nato.int/article/mdo-in-nato-explained/

https://www.japcc.org/flyers/all-domain-operations-in-a-combined-environment/

https://www.defensenews.com/artificial-intelligence/2023/04/28/connectivity-will-make-or-break-us-military-use-of-ai-official-says/

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3692664/project-convergence-capstone-4-works-to-integrate-joint-multinational-defense-s/

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2018/11/16/darpa-pushes-mosaic-warfare-concept

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Guderian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_warfare

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1560-1.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare

https://icds.ee/en/the-bronze-soldier-crisis-of-2007/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354879784 _Cyber_and_Electromagnetic_Activities_and_Their_Relevance_in_Modern_Military_Operations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon

https://www.baesystems.com/en-us/definition/mosaic-warfare

https://www.leidos.com/insights/what-mosaic-warfare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_continuum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_system

https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/concepts/ joint_concept_integrated_campaign.pdf? ver=2018-03-28-102833-257

James Mattis and Frank G. Hoffman, “Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars,” Proceedings 131/11/1233 (November 2005), <www. usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2005-11/ future-warfare-rise-hybrid-wars>.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1535-1.html

https://interpret.csis.org/chinese-assessments-of-the-war-in-ukraine-2-years-on/

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1535-1.html

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1535-1.html

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1535-1.html

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1535-1.html

https://chinapower.csis.org/20th-party-congress-china-military-pla-cmc/

https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2023/8/28/chinese-political-warfare-a-strategic-tautology

https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/03/five-reasons-why-russia-struggling-ukraine/362636/

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/04/dont-sleep-russian-information-war-capabilities/364050/

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/european-us-regulators-tell-banks-prepare-russian-cyberattack-threat-2022-02-09/

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/04/dont-sleep-russian-information-war-capabilities/364050/

https://ecfr.eu/publication/the-meaning-of-sovereignty-ukrainian-and-european-views-of-russias-war-on-ukraine/

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/2/6/why-some-eu-countries-still-harbour-pro-russian-sentiments

https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/05/bosnia-moldova-armenia-between-russia-eu

https://insightnews.media/how-russian-disinformation-works-in-europe-babakovs-hacked-emails/

https://insightnews.media/russias-military-unit-54777-disinformation-and-psychological-operations-abroad/

https://barrystrauss.com/fighting-smart-a-lesson-from-sun-tzu/

https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/sv/om-forsvarsmakten/totalforsvaret/

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokonaismaanpuolustus

Contemporary Operational Theatre and an Old Concept for Survivable Command Posts

How does command and control survive against Russian use of force?

 An excellent article by Raido Saremat, “The issues with the command posts in modern warfare”[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/issues-command-posts-modern-warfare-raido-saremat-n5jsf/],  brought to my mind the Transferable Operation Centre (TOC) prototype project from early 2000. I was privileged to participate in the Northern Command of Defence Forces Finland. 

The challenge to have enough human competency in proximity to create viable plans, conduct complex operations, or analyse sound assessments of adversary intentions while surviving on the battlefield was our driver in those scenarios and today’s Ukrainian theatre. 

Our team used the spiral development method over three years to incrementally build-test-improve a concept for Transferable Operation Centre that would ensure human proximity while improving survivability under intense C2 warfare. 

Instead of having a single, slowly transferable headquarters (HQ), the project introduced a swarm of command post elements. Each element consisted of five staff officers and two support persons. These elements could be housed in fixed shelters, transferable containers, civilian or military vehicles or only officers carrying their computers in suitcases. 

Concept

Command post elements could be deployed together in close quarters within protective facilities or distributed anywhere over a wide area network (WAN). Each element was designed to be operable within 15 minutes from arrival and dismantled within the same time due to departure. The access connection was wireless (WLAN). If the command post element was mounted in a vehicle, the assembly and disassembly could be even quicker. 

The survivability of the transferrable operation centre is adjustable to the threat environment by varying the location, number of elements, strength of assembly, and movement of elements. Swarming TOC concept supported, for example, the following scenarios:

• In peacetime, all components can be assembled in a large shelter or industrial warehouse to maximise physical proximity.
• For task or forward post situations,  a selection of planning, C2 and Intel elements could create a forward command post either on the same site or distributed within the access network.
• The elements would be geographically distributed and divided into shifts during intense operations and under high risk. The duty shift of C2 would be online and conducting operations. The second C2 shift would be resting, and the third shift would be training and readiness to take over if the duty element is lost.

The outcome is a virtual headquarters that is not dependent on any location or computer. All information services and databases are clustered in the cloud computer infrastructure, providing operational awareness, planning tools, and analysing applications to the whole theatre of battle. 

Adversaries would not have fat HQ targets to hunt with image or signals intelligence, but tens or hundreds of small elements of 5 experts distributed in the theatre and cloud computing infrastructure that would be distributed to tens of data centres in the country and abroad.

Lessons from experimentation

Because of the spiral development method, each year of development included several live exercises. One of them provided positive feedback, although reserve officers both used and operated the TOC services for the first time: [https://c4isys.blogspot.com/2013/01/spiral-development-of-c4isr-system.html]

1. Those processes staffed with off-duty and on-duty shifts suited the virtual CP concept well and allowed the CP site to transfer every time the shift changed.
2. With online support and IT-skilled reserve officers, the technical support for each element transfer was sufficient.
3. The establishment time needed for each user to gain access and start working with the operational picture and planning process was eliminated to minutes after arrival at the CP site.
4. All information and documents must be digital and stored in the cloud to enable digital staff work.
5. The security can be adhered to while working with secure and restricted information systems over a public access network.
6. The collaboration enhanced with VoIP-telephone and virtual whiteboard enables practical virtual staff work among distributed command post elements.

It seems that the military were foreseeing a scenario that we all were forced to adapt during the COVID pandemics.

Man versus Machine at Combat Tactical Level Decision Making

The human ability to collect information, make sense of a situation, optimise action, and learn while executing has been challenged recently in games, simulators, diagnoses, and real-time analysis. How may this development reflect to future tactical combat level decision-making? Is the machine going to win the man in combat?

"This requires not only substantial investment in resources but also an open-minded and exploratory approach, in contrast to the common but sometimes exaggerated perception of military organisations as conservative entities." Meir Finkel (Finkel 2023)

"Fifth-generation warfare shifts the focus from kinetic force in physical dimension to the impact information dimension, where narratives and perceptions take centre stage, enabled by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation, and robotics." Daniel Abbott (Abbott 2010)

The article reviews some recent achievements in artificial intelligence, sets the situation for the combat technical level functions, digs deeper into decision-making under stressful conditions and illustrates a possible vision for the future state. The aim is to shake the historically conservative concepts of land battle to consider future possibilities.

Artificial Intelligence Improvements in Decision Making

A view to the evolution of machine learning improvements in various strategic-tactical games and competitions in Table 1 shows that machines are catching up and dominating men in table, card and video games and creativity competitions. Furthermore, fast-learning general-purpose algorithms are beating dedicated algorithms in those same games. 

Table 1: A sample of improvements in Machine learning applications in gaming and creativity

Year	Confrontation	Improvement
1997	Chess: DeepMind against Garry Kasparov	It took IBM 11 years to build and use customised chips to execute parallel searches. DeepMind was able to evaluate 200 million positions per second.
2016	Go: AlphaGo against Lee Sedol	A neural network-based algorithm first learned from game data, then played against itself, and finally, improved based on made mistakes. AlphaGo was able to create an unseen move during the game.
2017	Chess: AlphaZero against Stockfish (2016 top chess engine)	General purpose reinforcement learning algorithm that learned Chess after playing 4 hrs against itself. AlphaZero was able to assess 80 000 positions per second.
	Shogi: AlphaZero against Elmo (2017 world champion Shogi engine)	The algorithm learned the game after playing 2 hrs by itself. AlphaZero was able to assess 40 000 positions per second on a board that has more options than Chess.
	Go: AlphaZero against AlphaGo Lee (advanced Go engine)	Deep neural network with tabula rasa reinforcement learning algorithm. The algorithm learned the game within three days while playing itself.
	Poker: Liberatus against four champion poker players	The algorithm used a game theoretic approach for reasoning in an imperfect information environment while playing simultaneously against four human players with the following abilities: ·        Managing the whole poker competition in advance ·        Solving each game during the contest ·        Self-improvement after each day of the three-week competition
2019	Dota 2: Open AI Five against a Team of 5 esport players	The algorithm used proximal policy optimisation. The algorithm used 800 petaflops/s to gain about 45 000 years of experience within ten months. The short-term average decision time was 80ms.
2020	AlphaFold2 doubled the score of human competitors in Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction.[1]	The algorithm predicted 3D structures based on complicated rules faster and more holistic than a human.
2022	AI model that uses tens of terabytes of Earth system data and can predict the next two weeks of weather tens of thousands of times faster and more accurately than contemporary forecasting methods.[2]	With enormous amounts of data, ML algorithms can create forecasts of very complex phenomena.

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[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/23/1045016/ai-deepmind-demis-hassabis-alphafold/

[2] https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/07/05/1075865/eric-schmidt-ai-will-transform-science

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In conclusion and, in theory, a machine combined with the above features could:

1. Starts from zero knowledge and trains within months to master given battle scenario's technical, tactical, and possibly operational level features for victory.
2. Anticipates adversary moves ahead, creates picture of potential scenarios, and predicts adversary manoeuvring in 3-D space better than humans.
3. Makes short-term decisions within 80 milliseconds and optimises decisions simultaneously at technical and tactical levels.
4. Identifies lessons from the events and gains 150 years of theoretical combat experience teaching itself overnight.

 

Technical Level of Ground Combat is a Complex Military Decision-Making Environment

Probability and chance are well-recognised (Clausewitz 1984) (Fuller 2012) (Oliviero 2021) factors of battle environment. Tactics-technical level combat capability is a sum of surprise, manoeuvre, mass, firepower, and tempo (to name some essential tenets) orchestrated in variety of combinations with Command and Control to disrupt the adversary's socio-technical military system and exhaust its fighting ability. (Friedman 2017) The tactical tenets are in transformation to address the foreseeable changes on the battlefield. First, let's review the most likely changes in land warfare and, second, see what they will require from tactical tenets.

RUSI Land Warfare Conference (RUSI 2023) promoted the following tendencies of change in land warfare, which will challenge the contemporary tactics:

1. Transparent battlefield

• Civilian and military LEO satellite-based sensors provide a continuous feed of information from above the battlefield. The data can be acquired from commercial sources and fused with algorithms trained to identify especially military action on the ground.
• Unattended ground sensors improve details and add reliability to real-time event pictures.
• Cover and concealment become harder since sensors can fuse detection data from different parts of spectrum.
• Adversary will know the location and movement of blue forces as quickly as the information flows in the blue battle management system.

2. The concentration of effects vs protection

• Standoff weapons, lethal autonomous weapon systems, and precision warheads make it challenging to survive with contemporary armour. Adding armour thickness slows tactical mobility.
• Concentrated armoured units create a lucrative target for conventional artillery, attack helicopters, or massing of anti-tank UASs.
• Platforms and actors need to become more expendable and distributed but able for coordinated manoeuvres and fires.

3. Sustainment

• Logistics enables the tempo of fighting and is essential for offensive operations. Supplying distributed units require new delivery methods.
• Movement and mass of material expose logistics for continuous, wide-spectrum surveillance, so protection and endurance of logistics become a challenge.

4. Situational awareness

• An increasing amount of data and information challenges sense-making as human cognition overburdens from large amounts of information, loses focus in the stimulus-rich environment, and makes a biased conclusion.
• The organisational culture may prevent the distribution of information (need-to-know vs need-to-share; air-gap security vs zero-trust security), so situational awareness does not meet the requirements of distributed tactics. (Mansoor and Murray 2019)

5. Boundless, urban battlespaces

• People reside primarily in urban environments, and military strategies aim to "capture the will of the people and their leaders, and thereby win the trial of strength." (Smith 2005)
• Participating actors in urban battlespace may include, for example, civilians, communal authorities, law and rescue institutes, local corporates, international corporates, non-governmental organisations, insurgents, commercial military companies, interest groups, militias, criminal organisations, adversary regular forces and adversary coalition units. (Waterman 2019)
• The urban environment is more complex as these actors do not carry clear signs for identification, their intentions may transfer from day to night, and they do not follow agreements on war crimes.

In conclusion, the following Table 2 reflects the above tendencies to classical tenets of tactics and illustrates the possible impact in battle techniques and tactics and, therefore, change of tactical sense- and decision making.

Table 2: How do visible tendencies of change in land warfare affect tactical tenets of ground combat?

Tenet / Tendency	Surprise	Manoeuvre	Massing of force	Firepower	Tempo
Transparency	Surprise in land domain may be gained through other domains and dimensions.	Swarming manoeuvre of smaller, less detectable platforms.	Concentration becomes lethal, but dispersion rules.	Target acquisition is more lethal if situational awareness is achieved.	The advantage is harder to gain in a transparent battlefield.
Effect	Systems effect creates surprise and disrupts force cohesion.	A large, moving, hot, and radiating platform is an easy target.	Calls for a mass of nimble, small, and mobile warheads	The 4IR produces software-defined effectors.	Dispersed effectors will increase friction and entropy.
Sustainment	N/A	Higher mobility and wider distribution obscures logistics.	Dispersed troops increase the logistical challenge.	Smart warheads require software maintenance.	Besides live supplies, the force needs technical maintenance.
Situational awareness	Digitalised C2 creates more cognitive bottlenecks.	Becomes a core enabler and vulnerability for the swarming of distributed effectors.	Becomes a core enabler and vulnerability.	Becomes a core enabler and vulnerability.	Becomes a core enabler and vulnerability .
Urbanisation	Provides concealment in the physical dimension.	Slows manoeuvre and promotes smaller, autonomous, and agile platforms.	Constraints massing of units, but prefers small, swarming effectors.	Favours defence but constraints offence.	Slows down units and increases their entropy.

Art of Military Sense- and Decision-making

A Concept for Sense- and Decision-making

The classical military decision-making framework defined by John Boyd is simplified as Observe, Orient, Decision, and Action (OODA) (Osinga 2007). Based on this framework, Figure 2 illustrates a concept for sense- and decision-making. In this context, sense-making consisting of observation and orientation, which interprets the equivocal data. (Mattila 2016) Furthermore, decision-making is searching and selecting alternatives optimising between projected results, capabilities, and constraints. (Mattila 2016) The concept has three different situational pictures: real-time events per domain, composed operational picture, and forecasted possible/intended situations, which are referred to existing information and, finally, shared and agreed upon at the socio-cognitive level.

Figure 2: Concept for Observe, Orient and Decide at the Military tactical level

The above Command and Control (C2) concept may be established with an emphasis on creative leadership or policy compliance. These emphases are founded in the culture from which armed forces are generated. For example, German culture from 1871 – 1945 promoted officers' autonomous and aggressive action on the battlefield. (Mansoor and Murray 2019) Conversely, after the forceful manipulation of Bolshevik government, Russian culture produced obedient younger officers and relied on experienced and resourceful commanders at the operational level. (Freedman 2022)

A Team of Military Officers in Decision-making

A successful military command should be a mixture of compliance with institutional management culture and creative operational art. (Kuronen 2015) German culture before WW II reflected the war as "an art, a free and creative activity founded on scientific principles." (Condell and Zabecki 2008) The US FM 5-0 requires adaptive leaders"…who do not think linearly, but  who instead seek to understand the complexity of problems before seeking to solve them…" (Cojocar 2011) On the other hand, NATO assesses military success with five measures of merit and only one of them, measures of performance (MoP), includes some personal leadership features. (CCRP 2002) The other four enforce doctrinal and process compliance. (NATO RTO 2002) The 1/5 ratio in expectations does not indicate innovative tactical decision-making from NATO officers.

At the tactical commitment level, all efforts should focus on gaining the initiative and, eventually, victory over the adversary (reduction of adversary combat power by more than 30%). (Oliviero 2021, 51) In reality, this is not necessarily evident for all officers: 

• Training enforces drills and tactical forms, so officers prefer to use familiar concepts to solve battlefield challenges in decision-making. 
• Viewpoints may be constrained by their basic training and arms. An infantry officer aims to gain ground, an armoured forces officer aims to gain distance, or an artillery officer assesses ranges, amount of ammunition and supplies to impose a particular effect. 
• The Red Force doctrine, officers are training against, remains linear, predictable, and unimaginative adversary. 
• Since live exercises are expensive, officers train their tactical decision-making in war games, which often neglect friction, fog, chaos, and cognitive stress present on the battlefield.

Studies (Henaker 2022) (Scott and Bruce 1995) (Loo 2000) have concluded that there are five different decision-making styles categorising individuals when making important decisions: Rational, Intuitive, Dependent, Avoidant and Spontaneous.

1. Rational seeks information systematically and prefers logical assessment. However, rational has challenges in creativity and implementation of decided intent.
2. Intuitive recognises details from the information flow and matches patterns that feel right. Intuitive relates positively to creativity and difficulty-solving. 
3. Dependent seeks social conformance from others before decision-making. The decision-making process may be distracted and in need of social support.
4. Avoidant tries to postpone decision-making because of their low self-esteem. Still, avoidant is compliant with policies, doctrines, and orders. Avoidant is not suitable for creativity and tends to have high stress levels.
5. Spontaneous tries to accomplish decision-making as soon as possible. Spontaneous does not like conflict situations but perform well in rash decision and high-risk situations.

Human vs Machine Decision-making in Future Battlefield

The section fuses the tenets of tactical combat with visible transformations and tries to reflect these new situations in human-centric and machine-centric decision-making as featured in previous sections. Table 3 illustrates the outcome of the fusion from the view of two champions:

• Human is assumed as an average decision-making officer with 3-4 years of military education and about five years of professional experience with, possibly, one year of experience gained in live tactical action. 
• Machine is assumed to be a high-performance computer running a combination of continuously learning algorithms, expert algorithms, and pre-trained algorithms with real-life or synthetic data. Digital connectivity is supposed to be at combat cloud level . 

Table 3: Human vs Machine decision-making in transforming tactical combat environment

Transforming tenets of tactical combat feature decision-making challenges	Human	Machine
Transparency increases information and requires more computing power to make sense of collected data. Tactics prefer smaller, profoundly dispersed, manoeuvrable effectors, which swarm for effect, and retreat quickly.	Available data and information may overburden the cognitive ability to comprehend the situation.	A machine can recognise images, find patterns from large data mass, and forecast complicated, interdependent behaviour.
Effect calls systems understanding for system-wide impact. Dispersed effectors are harder to control and coordinate. Software-defined precision requires better target acquisition and configuration.	The adversary must be understood as multi-dimensional actor-network (Inglis and Thorpe 2019). Dispersed effectors require coordination of larger volume of details.	A machine can map the COA spectrum, model complicated, interdependent systems, and optimise the action of small effectors.
Sustainment of distributed, cyber-physical platforms requires more flexible and expert maintenance.	Rising complexity of critical paths on availability or sustainment may overwhelm cognitive capacity under stress.	With a digital-twin model and scenario-based simulation, a machine creates an overall logistics picture and can optimise sustainment.
Awareness is achieved by delegating sense-making to lower cooperative level or improving the information management ability of a steeper, hierarchical command structure.	Socio-cultural structures and beliefs handicap the application of the optimum C2 method.	Socio-cultural structures do not constrain a machine, and it can act even with partial information environment.
Urbanisation increases entropy, slows the tactical pace, increases casualties, raises the need for sustainment, and makes the environment and situation harder to understand.	The urban environment increases entropy and requires more innovative decision-making.	A machine makes sense of complicated situation even with partial information, recognises faster volatile behaviour, and optimises effort and sustainment.

A Company Commander Meets an Ex-Machina Battle Captain

When a Human Commander meets an Ex-Machina Captain within a tactical scenario on a future battlefield, the parties of combat may have the different abilities for decision-making. In situation with equal forces, linear doctrines, and a reasonably stable battlefield, the company commander does not have a chance against Ex-Machina. A creative human commander may gain an advantage in more chaotic conditions and with innovative tactics. Are our military institutes educating agile officers? Still, higher man-machine teaming performance indications are positive in Dota 2 strategic game, but it remains to be studied in future articles.

 

Figure 3: Man vs machine in tactical decision making