Thread by @antbruceking

1/16 This is a fascinating, provocative, perceptive article. I would encourage everyone interested in command @LawDavF @almurray @WarintheFuture to read it. Thanks @Beags_Beagle for your and your team's work on this. I offer a few initial thoughts.

armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Milit…

2/@Beags_Beagle and his co-authors are surely correct to argue that the bloated divisional and brigade HQs of the 9/11 Wars are obsolete. They are far too vulnerable. At a UK divisional exercise in 2016, the commander observed that his static, tented CP was 'not an act of war'

3/ Consequently, @Beags_Beagle et al. argue that CPs must consist of 3 or 4 armd vehicles which are mobile, dispersed, with low signatures. However, because they draw on a cloud, are data-centric, AI-enabled, it will be possible to bespoke the situational picture for each node.

4/ Commanders will be able to make decisions effectively. Above all they will be able to converge multi-domain effects from these data enabled nodes.

5) The article also suggests that in the near future, commanders will be able to operate from virtual CPs. And will be able to be virtually present in any node they choose.

6/ Maybe I could make a few comments aimed at divisional level - and maybe corps. In developing a data-centric divisional CP, the UAF's experiences will be useful; not definitive but useful. At this point, their C2 structure has rightly remained classified.

7/ Yet we can make some inferences. The @Beags_Beagle article proposes that the model for the future CP is a mobile one. Since manoeuvre will remain central to land operations, the movement of CP will be critical to execute command.

8/This is totally logical. Yet, Ukraine may illustrate something different. Land warfare is likely to be attritional and positional (see @AmosFox6); defense is likely to be primary. So even tactical CPs may not need to move so much; it may be difficult to do so.

9/UAF battalion and brigade CPs seem to have been periodically mobile if OS reports are true. But I wonder how much 2* CPs have moved, even advanced tactical CPs, even in during the September counter-attack, and the current #counteroffensive. It will be interesting to know.

10/Perhaps rather than thinking about tactical CPs being mobile. We could emphasise that they need to be fortified, subterranean, in urban areas, where they can hide their signatures even more. Especially since operations may be more static.

11/This article rightly stresses reach back. Assuming bandwidth, data can travel infinitely. So there is no need to aggregate staff. Reachback HQs should become much more important. Future Plans, Current Plans, and most of Intel functions could all be done back: data sent forward

12/ Indeed, the #UkraineRussiaWar illustrates this precisely. It is now in the public domain (see @washingtonpost) that @18airbornecorps and @82ndABNDiv provided essential support to UAF from Germany and presumably US: a doubly transnational C2 architecture.

13/ I think these data centric, transnational CPs may actually becoming even bigger. They need to converge multi domain effects. That will be difficult. They will need data engineers and programmers (many from tech companies). They may enlarge so the Tac HQs can shrink.

14/The article suggests that command presence could be maintained in the dispersed nodes in the combat zone virtually. I wonder about this. As the authors acknowledge it would be very expensive. And technically it looks a long way off.

15/ To link those dispersed nodes together, I might recommend a human-centric approach. (Those of you who know me know what I'm going to say!). Commanders might create closely integrated command teams, of empowered deputies, subordinates, who can as for, or even as their boss.

16/That to me would be mission command in a data-centric era.

/End

*act