The Human In Command

This book brings together experienced military leaders and researchers in the human sciences to offer current operational experience and scientific thought on the issue of military command, with the intention of raising awareness of the uniquely human aspects of military command. It includes chapters on the personal experiences of senior commanders, new concepts and treatises on command theory, and empirical findings from experimental studies in the field.

Peace support operations have unique characteristics. These operations require qualities of commanders and their teams that are in addition to the qualities that are normally needed to conduct successful combat operations. Materiel, doctrine, and training must be tailored to fulfill their functions, but it is the quality of the human in command that leads to successful missions in ambiguous situations. What are these qualities and what are the ingredients for effective operations? The Human in Command: Peace Support Operations combines personal experiences of commanders, empirical data on peace support issues, and theoretical models. It provides the reader with insight into current issues such as leadership, mission characteristics, mission preparation and training, crisis management, operational conditions and processes, multinational cooperation, and effectiveness of individual commanders, units, and missions.

This book presents a human factors and ergonomics evaluation of a digital Mission Planning and Battle-space Management (MP/BM) system. An emphasis was placed on the activities at the Brigade (Bde) and the Battle Group (BG) headquarters (HQ) levels. The analysts distributed their time evenly between these two locations. The human factors team from Brunel University, as part of the HFI DTC, undertook a multi-faceted approach to the investigation, including: - observation of people using the traditional analogue MP/BM processes in the course of their work - cognitive work analysis of the digital MP/BM system - analysis of the tasks and goal structure required by the digital MP/BM - assessment against a usability questionnaire - analysis of the distributed situation awareness - an environmental survey. The book concludes with a summary of the research project's findings and offers many valuable insights. For example, the recommendations for short-term improvements in the current generation of digital MP/BM system address general design improvements, user-interface design improvements, hardware improvements, infrastructure improvements and support improvements. In looking forward to the next generation digital MP/BM systems, general human factors design principles are presented and human factors issues in digitising mission planning are considered.

Since its inception, just after the Second World War, Human Factors research has paid special attention to the issues surrounding human control of systems. Command and control environments continue to represent a challenging domain for human factors research. Modelling Command and Control takes a broad view of command and control research, to include C2 (command and control), C3 (command, control and communication), and C4 (command, control, communication and computers) as well as human supervisory control paradigms. The book presents case studies in diverse military applications (for example, land, sea and air) of command and control. The book explores the differences and similarities in the land, sea and air domains; the theoretical and methodological developments, approaches to system and interface design, and the workload and situation awareness issues involved. It places the role of humans as central and distinct from other aspects of the system. Using extensive case study material, Modelling Command and Control demonstrates how the social and technical domains interact, and why each require equal treatment and importance in the future.

The Army's transformation to Future Combat Systems (FCS) poses an unprecedented alliance of humans and machines, particularly for Command and Control (C). Creating a human-machine alliance that actually improves command and control is a severe challenge in human-system integration for FCS. First, this report selectively identifies four overarching research issues for command and control: Allocation, Autonomy, Authority, and Awareness. Second, two complementary research approaches, mid-scale and small-scale transformation environments, for investigating human-system integration issues are described. An example of a mid-scale transformation environment from the FCS C2 program is provided with selected results from Experiment 1 on human-system integration. The value added by small-scale transformation environments, however, is needed to maintain a human-centric focus and provide two unique roles: a breeding ground for innovation to larger environments, and proving ground for issues from larger environments. An example of an emerging small-scale transformation environment directed at FCS concept exploration and training is provided. The core technical, operational and human performance assets currently available for this small-scale transformation environment are described. The report's intended audience includes any members of the user, researcher, and developer community who might benefit from, or provide benefit to, the Army's ongoing FCS research program."--DTIC.

Explores the circumstances that led to Britain's support of the United States in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how the Ministry of Defence coped with challenges including rivalry and diffuse responsibility among the Service Chiefs, lack of clear strategy, and weak domestic political support.

Communication for Command and Control Systems provides a thorough exposition of the basic theoretical and practical features involved in the design of communication networks for command and control systems. This book focuses primarily on the practical side of computer-controlled communication. This text concentrates on the communication sides of the subject by surveying the means of transferring data between the various processing points and by appraising their potential advantages and possible defects in implementation. In this respect, this book should prove useful for the practicing engineer engaged in command and control system design in civil, military, and administrative spheres. Accompanying materials such as charts and illustrations are also provided as useful reference. For the system designers, this text is a unique reference; this book also presents comparison tables that can be of practical assistance in the selection of the blocks for specific operations.

The 1940 Ogdensburg Agreement entrenched a formal defence relationship between Canada and the United States – but was Canadian sovereignty upheld? Sovereignty and Command combines historical narrative with conceptual analysis of sovereignty, command and control systems, military professionalism, and civil-military relations to document the sometimes fractious Canada–US continental air defence relationship. Richard Goette argues that a functional military transition from an air defence system based on cooperation to one based on integrated and centralized command and control under NORAD allowed Canada to retain command of its forces and thus protect Canadian sovereignty.