The Grand Challenges of Command and Control Policy

Abstract : We are interested in defining and investigating the grand challenges facing the command and control (C2) community in a network centric, transformational environment. The purpose of these investigations is to provide a rigorous basis for assessing the state of the art and the state of the practice of command and control in modern warfare. In 1900, David Hilbert proposed a list of 23 outstanding problems in mathematics, a number of which have now been solved, some of which remain open but have guided mathematics analysis for the last 100 years. In a similar vein, it is the intent of this paper is to attempt to define the challenges facing modern defense organizations such that formal requirements and solutions to these problems may begin to evolve. Thus, once the grand challenges are defined and accepted, C2 art and practice may be analyzed and measured against these grand objectives on the basis of a continuum of progress. That continuum is suggested as containing the following elements: formal definitions of the grand issues; agreement of both the issues and their definition by the warfighting community; and formal metrics definitions for each issue such that progress is easily identified, measured, and recognized as progress.