Effectiveness of forces and C2 in a semi-chaotic environment - an integrating methodology

Abstract

The effect of C2 on force effectiveness is given substantial attention over the last decades. However, analysts are still struggling to reflect this effect. This report presents a methodology that reflects the contribution of decision-making in an analytically well-founded way, thus contributing to the understanding of the area. Battlefield decision-making is modelled as a combination of proactive and reactive decisions. Acknowledging that a decision-maker's search and monitoring capacity is limited, a split is made between a set of alternative actions that can be planned for in advance, and a larger and more detailed set that can not. Proactive decisionmaking is modelled as a hierarchy of two-player zero-sum games that reflects the hierarchic planning and decision-making in an organisation. Reactive opportunity exploitation is modelled as variations within each game strategy, and the concept endogenous opportunities is introduced to account for the effect of an organisation following up low level success on a higher level. A data gathering procedure is suggested, exploiting the rigidity of organisational knowledge.