Information has always been the most important resource for improved command and control (C2) decision-making but it is also an increasingly perishable resource in today’s high-tempo, high-intensity operational environment. With the growing number of sensor platforms being employed today, the amount of information becoming available to Commanders, their staff and warfighters has grown exponentially. In the context of this massive growth in information, the risk of Commanders and warfighters becoming overwhelmed and disoriented by the information burden is a serious challenge.
Under the Joint All-Domain Operations Command and Control (JADC2) construct, C2 is presented as a distributed and dynamic enterprise. Through the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), producers and consumers of information are able to empower tactical commanders with the ability to respond rapidly to evolving situations in forward combat operations. By rapidly provisioning the information necessary for mission success, ABMS intends to improve the speed and quality of decisions-making while simultaneously reducing the information burden and cognitive-overload on Commanders and warfighters at once.
Managing the information burden on C2 enterprises through Information Management (IM) is critical otherwise performance in planning and operations can be degraded. IM on the other hand has become more complex given the accelerating developments in Information Warfare (IW). As the cyberspace domain is integrated into the C2 enterprise, there is a growing matrix of cyber vulnerabilities which adversaries will seek to target and exploit in support of IW objectives. IW thus presents a persistent complex threat to the ABMS, IM enterprise and, more vastly, to the goal of developing a position of Information Dominance.
Information which directly feeds planning and operational decisions will stay the key determinant of a mission’s success or failure. In order to achieve the decisive combat advantage sought by the JADC2 construct, the ABMS is the mechanism but Information Dominance is the means. As the operations space becomes more complex and the IM enterprise is threatened by increasingly sophisticated forms of cyberwarfare, the information position of Commanders and warfighters will be placed under new types of stress.
The ‘information position’ is an abstract measure of the differential between the Information Requirement (IR) of the Commander, Commander’s staff or warfighter and Information Availability. In the JADC2 context, Information Availability (IA) can be said to denote the ability of the ABMS, IM and IW enterprises to provide Joint Force components with the specific information that is required as and when it is required. IA is also defined and measurable in relation to the reliability, accessibility and timeliness of decision-feeding information.
As the IR and IA are constantly in flux and evolving, the information position of a Joint Force component is highly dynamic, especially during the high-intensity forward, tactical-edge combat associated with the future anti-access/area denial (A2AD) environment. More than ever before, provisioning the IR and ensuring the right information reaches the right person at the right time has become a more complex and more automated process.
The IR is understood in terms of the five W’s – Who (the subject), What (the activity of subject), Where (the area of activity), When (the time window of the IR) and Why (what decision-making the IR relates to). Both the IR and IA are inherently fluid in how they are defined at given point, scaled and cascaded across the ABMS and IM enterprise in a IW environment. When IA is able to deliver the IR, the information position is strong or dominant and the resulting situational awareness (SA) enables improved decision-making for the Joint Force component. When IA cannot fulfil the IR, the information position is weak or inferior and the operations space is degraded.
Central to the process of creating favourable information positions to enable superior SA and improved decision-making for Joint Force components will be automation – including in generating, fusing, exploiting and protecting information resources and flows. The role of automated tools to reduce the information burden, optimize IM and integrate IW toward a common purpose will be crucial in achieving and assuring a position of Information Dominance.
Massive Multiple-In Multiple-Out (MIMO) communications technologies today enable spatial channelization and diversity which allow a unit of force to simultaneously receive multiple data streams. Technologies such as this can deliver a distributed service-based architecture to create the most robust real-time picture possible for warfighters extending across multi-domain situation monitoring, threat warning, collection management, and targeting intelligence. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have a pivotal role to perform in addressing the information burden and multi-domain IW threats increasingly harvested on C2 elements.
AI and ML algorithms will be able to automatically decompose the IR of a Commander or warfighter into specific, sensor-relevant collection needs, task available collection or targeting assets and then gather and fuse data into decision-relevant information. This multi-domain promulgation and federation of data, intelligence and information to the unit level via cloud-based applications will generate a comprehensive battlespace visualization to headquarter elements and the warfighter engaged in forward combat at once.
To generate such a position of Information Dominance, a significant paradigm shift is necessary in how producers, curators and consumers of information conduct their relative operations. The intelligence community and components of IM and IW are in a position contribute a myriad of information resources to the ABMS mosaic. A transition from static, foundational databases into a worldwide web-like application with the ABMS are necessary to enhance the integration of decision-enhancing information.
The same is true for integrating combat mission results from the unit level back into the intelligence community and IW enterprises. Cyberspace operations, information operations, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) derived from the multi-domain sensor network must become seamlessly integrated within the ABMS in order to reflect the most current battlespace reality to tactical decision-makers. Within IW, cyberspace operations will be geared to both defend the ABMS as well as present cyber vulnerabilities of the adversary for exploitation and targeting. In this way the ABMS will and function as an AI-assisted rapid-repository system for information but also an integrator for multi-domain effects and solutions.
Information Dominance construed this way will require the development and implementation of new security protocols to generate AI-assisted cross-domain solutions for IW and intelligence data transfers to and via ABMS as well as for sensor and platform-derived data into the opposite direction. Together with this, new tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) will need to be developed so that peak performance for the ABMS can be actualized and the necessary synergies be established which enable rapid, continuous, simultaneous two-way transfers of intelligence and sensor data for superior IM and integrated IW.
