This document discusses the need for a new approach to command and control (C2) of aerospace operations. Emerging threats from adversaries, new technologies, and the increasing velocity of information are challenging the current C2 construct. A new C2 architecture is needed that enables centralized command with distributed control and decentralized execution. This architecture would utilize a "combat cloud" to integrate air, space, cyber and other capabilities across domains. It requires new operational concepts like "combined effects" and changes to C2 organizations, technologies and acquisition processes.

1. A New Era for
Command & Control
of Aerospace
Operations
Lt Gen David Deptula, USAF (Ret.)
Dean, The Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies
International Conference On Air And Space Power;
Istanbul, Turkey 2 Apr 2015

2. n Evolution of Command & Control of Aerospace
Operations
n Major Trends Influencing Command & Control
n Emerging Threats
n New Technologies
n Information Velocity
n Elements of a New Architecture for Aerospace C2:
n New Concepts of Operation
n Organizational Change
n Way Ahead
Overview

3. • Early C2 of air operations
• Segregated C2 of air ops due to doctrine and immature technology
• WWII—mostly segregated, but early stages of multi-service C2
• Korean War—service air components function autonomously
• Vietnam—Five separate air wars
• Modern C2 of air operations
• Greater integration of service component ops
• Desert Storm—first true integrated CFACC
• OAF/OEF/OIF/OUA/OUP/OIR—Still tendencies to use air weapons as
organic assets vice elements of integrated force application
• Evolution of fire support coordination measures
Time to Move to a Post-Modern Approach to Aerospace C2
Evolution Of C2 Of Air Operations

4. Emerging Threats
• For over two decades we have not been contested in
air and space…that era is rapidly changing
• Potential adversaries have studied the Coalition way
of war—now base their strategy on keeping us out of
their neighborhood
• Adopting—and proliferating—new cruise, ballistic, air-to-air, and surface-to-air
missiles, anti-satellite and cyberspace capabilities intended to deny friendly
forces freedom of action
• These developments threaten our C2 air and space ability in three ways:
- Kinetic and non-kinetic weapons to deny our space-based assets ISR and
communications capabilities thereby isolating our forces and blinding our leadership.
- Cyber attacks to intentionally disrupt operations at AOCs
- Accurate long-range missiles that threaten large, fixed, and exposed AOCs.
Threat developments present a fundamental challenge to
the current Coalition command and control construct
Major Trends Influencing C2

5. Scenario

6. New Technologies
• New technologies enabling new capabilities, will require new ways
of command and control to optimize desired effects
• Need to think beyond constraints traditional culture imposes on
new technology
- 5th generation aircraft are termed “fighters,” but technologically they
are flying “sensor-strikers” that will allow us to conduct information
age warfare inside contested battlespace whenever we desire—if we
fully exploit their “non-traditional” capabilities
• Requires leading-edge networking capabilities, and different
approaches to solving our data bandwidth challenges.
• New capabilities will require a new way of designing our force.
- As new long-range sensor-shooter aircraft (formerly called bombers)
enter the USAF we can amplify their effects through integration with
other forces by linking sensor/shooter capability from seabed to space
Exploiting New Technologies Requires New Ways of C2
Major Trends Influencing C2

7. Information Velocity
• Rapid advances in telecommunications, sensors, data storage, and processing
• Targeting cycle from months to weeks to days to minutes, and from multiple,
specialized, separate aircraft to the ability to “find, fix, and finish” from one aircraft
• The increase in information velocity is enabling increases in the effectiveness of
combat operations, but there is also a downside
- Tactical execution can be micro-managed by operational and strategic levels
• This devolution of the construct of centralized control—decentralized execution to
one of centralized control—centralized execution can reduce mission effectiveness
• Information synthesis and execution authority must
be shifted to the lowest possible levels while senior
commanders and staffs must discipline themselves
to stay at the appropriate level of war
Information Velocity Driving Changes in C2 Capabilities
Major Trends Influencing C2

8. New Concepts of Operation
• Velocity of information, advances in stealth, precision engagement, and sensors
are permitting a shift from “combined arms warfare” to “combined effects power”
• The combined effects approach is about integrating air, space, and cyber
capabilities within an agile operational framework to creating an ISR, strike,
maneuver, and sustainment enabled by interconnected, distributed operations
- Potential to link aerospace capabilities with sea and land-based means to
create an omni-present defense complex that is self-forming, and self-healing
- Enabling idea is cross-domain synergy
- The complementary employment of capabilities such that each enhances the
effectiveness—and compensates for the vulnerabilities—of the others
• Will require a command and control paradigm that enables automatic linking
transparent to the user, as well as seamless data transfer, without the need for
deliberate human interaction within and/or between the combat cloud nodes.
The ‘Combat Cloud’ Will Drive A Different Architecture for
the Conduct of Warfare
Elements of New C2 Architecture

9. Organization
• Innovation can be applied to organization as well as
from technology
• “Falconer” AOCs were the outcome of C2 lessons
learned from Desert Storm
• Facing a much different future—C2 architectures, processes, and organizations
need to evolve and advance at the same pace as threats, information, and tech
• Current AOC organization built around separate tasking for ISR (Planning Tool for
Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management (PRISM)) and force
application (Theater Battle Management Core Systems (TBMCS))
- Now operating in an era where the platforms PRISM and TBMCS were designed to
manage can now perform either mission or both
• Centralized control and decentralized execution has been a fundamental C2 tenet
• While still fundamentally sound, threats, information, and tech driving us to
consider “centralized command, distributed control, and decentralized execution”
Network-centric, interdependent, and functionally integrated
operations are the keys to future warfighting success
Elements of New C2 Architecture

10. • The challenges of new threats, information velocity, and advanced technologies
demand more than linear evolution of current C2ISR paradigms
• Significant new approach or evolution of current C2 architecture?
• Future success will not occur through incremental enhancements
- Industrial-age approaches to warfare have lost currency
- Information age warfare demands not “spiral development,”
but a distributed technological capability that optimizes
operational agility
• Will not be achievable without dramatic changes to:
- Current C2 CONOPS
- Organizational paradigms for planning, processing & execution
- Acquisition processes for C2 capabilities
- A determined effort to match new C2 paradigms to the three critical trends
Time to think beyond the organizational constructs that history
has etched into our collective psyche
The Way Ahead