Digital Technology for Small Unit Leaders
Written by Colonel Buddy Carman and Mike Kelley
MIT 2009 Volume: 13 Issue: 8 (September)
In Order to Leverage the Potential of Networked
Information, Small Unit Leaders Need Greater
Bandwith Connecting Them to a Secure Network.
As the U.S. military enters the ninth year of overseas contingency operations against terrorist groups, doctrine writers, material developers, and capability managers are sprinting to keep up with the rapidly changing demands of the warfighter. This conflict features asymmetric threats within a disparate culture and language of a populace struggling for basic essential services and security. Complex, densely populated urban areas as well as huge expanses of rural, harsh terrain further complicate the mission.
At the heart of all the challenges is maintaining effective command and control (C2). In order to adapt to the illusiveness of our adversary and the overwhelming scope of full spectrum operations, leaders at every level have demonstrated enormous creativity in adapting “legacy” doctrine and systems to accomplish the mission at hand.
A traditional view of tactical military command and control is a centralized structure. At the battalion level and above, seasoned, experienced, centrally selected commanders lead a trained battle staff, leveraging robust intelligence resources, to plan and disseminate operations orders and intelligence updates for execution. Eager but less experienced company commanders execute those orders and report information higher to provide the higher headquarters situational awareness and refine the plan.
These inputs from subordinate units feed refinements to the plan in the continuous planning and execution of the mission, resulting in fragmentary orders generated back to the subordinate smaller units. In simple terms, higher headquarters develop the plan, and company commanders do what they are told.
Current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated a shift in that traditional centralized view. Although battalion and above headquarters continue to provide orders and updates, company-level units have established significantly more robust “command posts” at their level. Companies are developing home-grown intelligence: leveraging human intelligence assets taskorganized to them as well as intelligence developed from direct relationships with indigenous security force and improved relationships with the local populace.
Often intelligence gathered on an objective, during a cordon and search for example, is rapidly exploited to conduct subsequent operations within hours of the first objective. Junior leaders are operating on intent, adapting rapidly to the environment and working under the principle of asking for forgiveness rather than waste valuable time seeking permission.
DECENTRALIZED COUNTERINSURGENCY
As a result of this shift in the C2 paradigm, the Army is struggling to adapt doctrine, organization structure and material requirements to resource the company commander with additional people, training and equipment to enable improved command and control. Why did this dramatic change to C2 occur?
As the Army’s 2004 interim field manual on counterinsurgency operations states, “C2 during counterinsurgency requires greater decentralization to small unit leaders. Normal operating methods focused around a single commander’s approval often prove inefficient, untimely, and ineffective for the situation. Commanders must develop a level of trust communication with subordinates and foster their initiative well before arriving into the theater of operations. Commanders must empower their subordinates with clear authority for specific operations. The subordinate leaders must clearly understand orders, missions, and the commander’s intent down to the squad and fire team level. … If C2 and decision making become slow processes, the insurgents can exploit this. Additionally, commanders often coordinate with other agencies that will not be present on a conventional battlefield.”
The nature of the counterinsurgency (COIN) environment demands decentralized C2. Small unit leaders must develop relationships with the local populace and hostnation security forces that share their area of operations. Intelligence often hinges on these relationships and is more commonly developed from the “bottom up” that from analysis form higher levels. Therefore, they have developed internal C2 structure to meet the demands of this fight.
The current fight has dramatically increased the operational tempo for ground forces. In addition to repeated combat deployments, the nation is asking the force to accomplish an incredibly broad range of missions and skills, including training host nation security forces; assisting in nation-building and providing essential services; developing and improving cultural awareness and basic language skills; and conducting time-sensitive missions to capture or kill senior insurgent leaders by exploiting fleeting intelligence from national assets.
Previously, these are missions or tasks that were associated with special operations forces, after undergoing highly specialized training. Now, these are routine lines of operations for conventional ground forces.
These seasoned warriors understand the intricacies of counterinsurgency operations. They’ve developed relationships with the people, both security forces and the local populace. They have built trust and learned how to develop and exploit human intelligence sources at the lowest levels of leadership. They understand the second order effects of their actions. They’ve learned the fundamentals of COIN not from the schoolhouse, but the school of hard knocks.
Today’s soldiers and Marines are the product of the information age—“digital natives” with no experience of a world that isn’t networked. Small unit leaders are very comfortable with multitasking—assimilating and leveraging enormous amounts of data from a variety of sources simultaneously. They are extremely comfortable with automation and information technology and often have made it an integral part of every aspect of their lives.
Two notable examples of successful systems are Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2) and Tactical Ground Reporting (TIGR). Although originally developed in the mid-’90s for the Army’s Counterattack Corps, FBCB2 is a real-time situational awareness and C2 system that automatically updates friendly locations and displays reported enemy activity on georeferenced imagery.
TIGR is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiative: a multimedia reporting system for soldiers at the patrol level, allowing users to collect and share information to improve situational awareness and to facilitate collaboration and information analysis. The digital-native leaders at the company level are able to exploit these systems to improve situational awareness, plan missions, and conduct more effective command and control.
But a significant gap remains for C2 at the company and below. In addition to improvements to manning and training, small unit leaders need better connectivity to the network and a simplified interface.
INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIPS
In order to leverage the potential of networked information, small unit leaders need greater bandwidth connecting them to a secure network. In order to keep pace with the growing demand, the military must find a more effective way to leveraging current and emerging wireless technology to push connectivity to the lowest level. Whatever bandwidth we will be able to provide will be rapidly consumed with a variety of critical data: photos, biometric data, streaming video, and a growing amount of other sensor data.
In order to meet the demand, we must partner with industry to develop a variety of low-cost, redundant communications options for both terrestrial and celestial networks to provide a robust network capability.
Leveraging the digital native’s inherent expertise with information technology is fundamental to any successful automation tool.
Part of TIGR’s success as a small unit leaders’ operational tool is its ease of use. The software developers patterned the graphic user interface off of Web 2.0 applications like Facebook and Twitter. A variety of COTS systems have been developed and deployed, but they often require “swivel chair” operations—taking data from one system and manually entering it into another, incompatible system.
As we develop new software applications and improve existing systems, material developers and industry must make a concerted effort to create an intuitive user interface that allows the warfighter to access applications from a single work station. The development must include refinements from user juries that allow recently redeployed leaders to operate prototype systems and provide feedback on improvements to make them effective. Creating a more intuitive user interface also reduces the amount of training time required to operate the system since it more closely replicates the systems he uses every day.
Although this article has focused on the need for improving the network and software applications for small unit leaders, these are merely tools needed by leaders to improve effectiveness. It is a dangerous assumption that improvements in information technology will solve the challenges of the current fight. Used inappropriately, they can actually become a distraction or lead to micromanagement from a command post. Improving information technology will be a critical enabler only when coupled with disciplined, realistic training and professional, engaging leaders.
In order to bring about effective change in improving information technology for small unit leaders, the military must skillfully partner with industry. The current acquisition system is too cumbersome to keep pace with the rapid improvements in technology. We must become more agile to leverage emerging technology more effectively.
Our industry partners, meanwhile, must develop a longer view in their relationship with the military, focused on modular, upgradeable systems, providing insight to promising emerging technology, and geared toward customer satisfaction and support to the warfighter instead of the “quick buck.” ♦
Colonel Buddy Carman is the TRADOC capability manager for platform battle command and combat identification, and Mike Kelley is his deputy.
