Command and Control
The Command and Control podcast takes an independent and pragmatic look at what military command and control might look like for the fight tonight and the fight tomorrow. It explores the hypothesis that command is human, while control has become more technologically pronounced, leading to centralisation away from local command. The podcast discusses the trend in Western C2 since the late 1980s and how it might evolve with AI and cutting-edge technology.
Episodes
Ancient Generalship
There is more useful knowledge on command from the ancients than we know what to do with. Dr Charles Vandepeer from Charles Sturt University in Australia poses a series of enduring questions that commanders continue to face, and sets up the question as to why the generals of Greece, Macedon, and Rome were successful – in peace and war. But this is not simply another anthology of great men: it pose
C2 Outside the Human Comfort Zone?
There is a tension between modern trend in centralising C2 (to govern the best use of resources) versus the now largely historical reliance on 'mission command'. Solutions are confounding Western commanders: according to Eva Sula there are additional dilemmas that are arising from the evolution of C2 in combat conditions – not least of which is how to import, verify, and use the vast data sets tha
The Future of US National Guard C2
The US National Guard is closely tied to the C2 transformation programmes of the US Army; as their strategic and operational reserve there is no alternative. Yet the other missions of the National Guard - whether responses to pandemics, civil unrest, or natural disasters - have different priorities to meeting and destroying the enemy. Lt Gen (rtd) Jon Jensen, 22ndDirector of the National Guard, ta
C2 and Lawfare
No commander would deny that military actions are governed by both behaviours, policy and law yet there is considerably more emphasis placed in rules of engagement, release criteria, and national interpretations of self defence in the training and education of military officers than in the legal principles that sits behind them. Those principles were created by fighters who had experienced the cau
The Future of US Battlefield Medicine
Battlefield medicine is as much an enabler and force multiplier as good logistics. Whilst this is acknowledged by many, including those in the US Army, there is a peculiar absence of consideration for Battlefield Health in selection and development of its new command and control system. Major General (retired) Edward Dorman, a proven combat leader and master logistician, digs into what is needed f
The Future of US Navy C2
The US Navy is undergoing some seismic changes in terms of C2. Not only is the concept of how they fight changing (from Fleet command to fight from the MOC), but also in changing the supporting system (GCCS-M). In understanding these changes, who is going what, when, and why, Peter is joined by David Gast, formerly head of PMW150 to outline the good, the bad, and the difficult; but most importantl
Conspiracies of Optimism
President Eisenhower was notable in expressing his frustration at his civilian staff's unwillingness to challenge or disagree with him face to face. That practice, of being challenged and questioned, was something he valued when he served as Supreme Allied Commander but it seems less evident in military headquarters today, or in recent history. Nor is this a peculiarly American tendency: as resear
The Future of US Army C2
A fresh mini-series on command and control that looks at the future of C2 for each of the US fighting arms. This episodes kicks off the deep dive with a look at what the US Army is aiming to achieve. Recently retired Vice Chief of Staff US Army, General (rtd) James Mingus talks about the US Army's philosophy for command and control, next generation C2, how allies and partners can get on board, and
C2 and the Northern Navies Initiative
Ten Baltic and Scandinavian (and the UK) have agreed to come together to form a multi-national maritime force for crisis response around Northern Europe, specifically on the maritime border with Russia. All parties are NATO members, and members of the Joint Expeditionary Force – itself a NATO framework organisation. Ed Arnold from the D Group explains why this is about operationalising the JEF whe
Promethean Shame
There is a tendency (particularly in militaries) to view machines as less fallible than humans. The rapid and passionate adoption and use of AI tools in military headquarters is a notable manifestation of machine/automation bias: to operate at machine speed is viewed by many in uniform as the panacea and—according to doctrine—offers those with it a preordained right to victory. The critical lesson
AI and Wingman
The rise of Agentic agents in military headquarters is a foregone conclusion. Understanding how they perform, where they may hallucinate answers, and their requirement for credible and reliable data sets sit at the heart of their utility. Henrik Sommer, a retired Brigadier General with the Danish military, explains some of the potential, vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and opportunities that AI can p
Russian Reflexive Control
Russia has become adept at directing the attention of its adversaries by triggering national security responses to small, sometimes insignificant activities, distracting Western leaders from Moscow's more important actions elsewhere. The Kremlin understand Western sociology and politics so well that one is hard pressed to do anything but admire their execution of reflexive control over external na
A city paralysed by cyber-attack: Civil C2 made real
In 2019, the Dutch municipality of Lochem was hit with a major cyber-attack that impacted everything from welfare payments to the sewage system. The mayor at the time – Sebastiaan van T' Evre – considered that the entire IT system had corrupted including backups. Starting from scratch, and with the help of suppliers and partners, Lochem rebuilt the bare bones within 24 hours. As a journey in civil
C2 - the long view (with Michael Holm)
It is rare to find anyone who has been actively engaged in C2 over a 20 year time span, let alone 40. For nearly half a century Michael Holm has been making C2 systems for the military. In that time he has witnessed the change in demands, data, systems, requirements, and opportunities. Michael brings an interesting perspective: as someone who has not served in the military - but has been dealing w
Manoeuvre and the network: C2 at XXX and Below
If the role of the Corps level is in setting the conditions for Divisions to win, how are Divisions and subordinate commands going to conduct their own battle (and command it)? What are their roles in the tactical battle? Where does the line get drawn between levels? Is it doctrinally fixed or dynamic? Modern divisions don't fight like those in WW2, nor as we planned to during the Cold War, certai
Amphibious Complexity: C2 in the AAF
If Europeans have been swiftly divesting themselves of real amphibious capability, the reverse has been true of the ADF in recent years. Ray Leggatt, the first true Commander Amphibious Task Force of the Australian Amphibious Force, talked through his experience in putting together an amphib capability for a state that had not done this sort of operation in a couple of generations. Ray provides a
Goldwater Nichols: Still fit for purpose?
Most people in the C2 world who would acknowledge the Goldwater Nichols reforms of the US military as one of the big muscle movements in command and control over the last 75 years. It provided the framework for how the US would run wars after 1986 and has had mixed success. But in organising the world of conflict along geographic lines, in prioritising the fights of today over preparing for the co
The Unfair Fight (HQ Corps job)
It is the responsibility of the Corps level of command to set the conditions for a favourable and unfair fight at the tactical level: so says Major General Mike Keating, Chief of Staff at Headquarters Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. The scale, complexity, and enduring nature of combat on land requires a structure that can enable divisions to fight and prevail, enabling subordinate formations to focus
Reality checking industry offerings for C2
C2 systems litter headquarters – some have coalesced into a single machine, others spread across various apps, platforms, and systems. It's a growing market place and one that can genuinely bamboozle with all the unmoderated lingo that goes with it. Claims that AI, ML, edge, and clould are scattered with wild abandon but lack some of the detail that HQ staff and commanders actually need. And there
C2 for Urban Warfare
Western militaries won't be able to do C2 in urban warfare scenarios well enough to prevail. So says Professor John Spencer, author, researcher, commentator and veteran of numerous campaigns. Recent lessons from urban fights demand that HQ staffs refocus on things they can control and need to influence (the Info Ops battle, allocation of scarce resources like engineers, as well as critical CIMIC,
Insubordination
Sometimes insubordination within the command chain actually works. Want an example? Take the infamous 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the divisional commander of a reserve formation (Ariel Sharon) circumvented not just his superiors but also the IDF chief in order to get approval for his plan. Gross insubordination….but it worked. History favours Sharon's own narrative but the command chain had a differ
C2 and Peacekeeping
Peace keeping missions (whether peace enforcement, peace building, peace making, or conflict prevention) are very different to the formatted hierarchy and organisation of set-piece, large-scale military missions which Western allies have been accustomed to over the past decade. Even the experiences of ISAF or Iraq are outliers rather than a standardised format replicable across peace keeping tasks
Professionals Talk Logistics
The key principles of logistics might not have changed (Jomini's principles remain as valid as ever), but we have been lulled into false sense of adequacy about logistics and war. Steve Leonard and Jon Klug delve into how protracted wars make command conversations about logistics and supply different. The honest advice from the G4 might not always be appreciated but husbanding resources for a long
Ukrainian C2: Adaptation under fire
The announcement in February 2025 of a restructuring of Ukrainian command and control went largely unnoticed in the West. It shouldn't have: the implications are significant. Mick Ryan provides some much-needed illumination and insight into what this means, why it came about, some of the challenges and opportunities that may result, and whether lessons are immediately transferrable. Training and s
CIMIC and C2
Everyone understands that civil agencies and institutions do not operate in the same way as military organisations. The culture, aims, objectives, and funding models are different, as is the way they run activity. So when militaries and these agencies interact, a sense of friction and misunderstanding often emerges. A small group of military staff stand between the behemoths of civil and military
Nuclear Command and Control
It's not a topic that is spoken about enough in the national security community: Nuclear Command and Control (NC2), and Communications (NC3) is a world apart from C2 for conventional forces: it underpins strategic stability between nuclear armed states. With the emergence of a '3-body problem' in Great Power Competition, there is a risk that Western leaders (political and military) simply try and
C2, MDO and Synchronisation
Fast reflections of the annual NATO C2 Centre of Excellence (C2COE) conference in the Hague with the centre's commanding officer, Meitta Groeneveld. The challenging issues of MDO and Synchronisation, and the implications of that doctrine on command and control, were the conference's planned themes. We ended up in a conversation about the Cross Domain Command Concept, data and the human, the need t
Horrid Bosses
The military sometimes promote and appoint leaders who are truly terrible. Sometimes this isn't their fault, they are not always narcissistic or toxic: sometimes they are just not up to the job. But the issue for staffs is how to handle poor leaders. Professor William Scott Jackson from Oxford University is perhaps the foremost researcher in this field, and he brings with him a wealth of experienc
Synchronisation as Coupling
If there is some unresolved tension in the ideas of mission command and synchronisation – particularly within the MDO concept – then it could be more useful to think about the USMC idea of Coupling: the idea of providing linkage between warfare activities that are needed for to meet the task and/or mission. Instead of simply connecting everything because it's possible, the Corps advocates for an a
Submarine Command and Control
Imagine sitting on a battlefield and trying to figure out what is happening with only your ears to guide you; your guidance is based on orders written weeks or months ago, and the last time you got an update of where your own forces where was a day old (at best). That, in essence, is submarine warfare. There is no constant information flow for situational awareness and communication (of any kind)
The Civ/Mil part from a NATO SecGen
Former NATO Sec Gen Jaap de Hoop Scheffer talks about what it takes to make effective command relationships work at the highest level of Pol/Mil C2: the tensions between domestic agendas and international obligations, decision-making in NATO, and how to achieve coherence and agreement in matters of war. The conclusion, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that the level of co-operation between politicians a
C2 Systems – how much has changed?
In providing commanders with the ability to command and control, computerised systems have been in use for more than 50 years. Their evolution from siloed systems inside individual units, moving across task forces, then to covering theatres has helped operators and HQ staffs orchestrate military means with increasing efficiency and lethality. The change in the last decade – according to Andrew Gra
Naval C2
The captain of a warship has, sometimes, godlike omnipotence. Does this mean that naval command and control has some unique characteristics that need to be better understood in order to be integrated into the 'modern' rubric? Vice Admiral Martin Connell, Second Sea Lord in the British Royal Navy, talks to Peter about what's unique about naval C2, and whether the education and development of leader
Not the Heroic Model of Decision-Making
What makes a good and a great military leader? The myth of a divine, born leader is very popular but today we actually know better than this fiction. Science has given us the evidence to understand what traits and characteristics imbue a person with the skills and experience become a great leader. And we actually know how to select them based on the very different requirements in wartime and peace
Delegation to the point of discomfort
Many medium powers have been struggling to keep pace with the US military as it reimagines how it will undertake command and control over the coming decade. For those in Canada the challenge is extremely pertinent: shared coastlines, integrated C2 at NORAD, conjoined airspace and territorial seas, a long and unfenced land border, and the block between the US homeland and Russian forces in the Arct
You Cannot Beat Winter
A discussion with Major General Karl Engelbrekston, former chief of the Swedish Army who retired in Jun 2023. Command and control is clearly different when operating in environmental and geographic extremes; the High North (well inside the Arctic Circle) exemplifies those conditions. How to command and how to exercise control over military forces in those extremes leads to an interesting conversat
The Devolution of Command
Having an intelligent conversation about command and control requires a discussion with the USMC, the same institution that gave us the current C2 taxonomy back in the 1980s. While USMC force design 2030 leans towards a decentralised command structure and an aggregated control hierarchy, the pragmatism of the Corps has nested capabilities at lower levels that would allow a much more flexible appro
Air C2
Command and control in the air domain has always been very different to that of other domains. Much more control, command execute in differnt ways, at different levels, and all captured in the phrase "Best picture has....". How much has been forgotten from former expereinces of air C2 in major contests and competiton? How much are we willing to relearn? How much of the differences in domain specif
NATO C2: How to improve
Having spent the week at the NATO C2 Centre of Excellence in The Hague, talking C2 with some impressive people, this episode captures a 'hot wash' between Peter and Colonel Mietta Groeneveld, Director and Commander of the C2COE. Given this was recorded only 90mins after a fairly intense 3 days, we don't cover all the take aways, but it gives a flavour about some of the themes we talked about and s
JADC2: A primer
In 2019, the Chiefs of Staff of the US military determined that C2 really had to adapt. The decision came after the publication of a report on Russian C2 and counter C2 capabilities: on that basis, the programme on Joint All Domain C2 was initiated. Currently, the US is spending between $1-2BN per year on it, having scoped it and pushed it forward with remarkable speed. It is progressing rapidly t
Question time
In this final episode of series one, Vice Admiral Andy Burns, Major General Zac Stenning and Andrew Graham answered questions from the audience on command and control live at the DSEi event in London. The panel couldn't get through all the challenges thrown their way so we focused on the big themes: What will C2 look like in the future? How will ML and AI impact decision-making? Will C2 survive in
Confidence and The Initiative
People lie at the heart of any C2 complex – both those in command and their HQ staff, as well as those at the gritty end of an orders process. Beyond the dry doctrinal definitions of command and control sit the facets of mental capacity, resilience, adaptability, leadership, standards, behaviours, and trust. This isn't a one-size-fits-all approach either because the shock of combat and the context
AI in C2
Everyone seems to be talking about how Artificial Intelligence inside HQs will revolutionise command and control. The issue is that we don't even seem to have an agreed definition of AI, and the pol and mil leaders providing this rhetoric don't seem to have an answer to that either (or really understand what it is). Sitting down with two AI specialists, people who work with AI engineers on a daily
Familiarity ≠ Trust
Trust has always been a central concept in military command and control: it can be based on a 'Band of Brothers' construct or something a bit more complex with allies and partners. Yet this human-to-human rubric is not the same when we consider the concept of trust as it applies to human-machine trust. Or is it? Peter talks to Christina Balis, who wrote a paper in June 2022 about human-machine tru
A New Orders Process
In 'How to Win' rather than 'How to Operate' in a peer or near peer war, time is vital and the ability to share commands (orders) faster than an adversary becomes a critical function of campaigning. The ability to plan and create those orders rapidly enables a different operating tempo to be achieved, ensuring dissemination works to outpace opponents. Peter talks to Lt Gen (rtd) Ben Hodges, US Arm
What makes a great commander?
It is not hard to identify the great (and successful) commanders across history – and it turns out they have a few things in common. But what has changed with the advent of control measures into the C2 rubric? Peter talks to Professor Michael Clarke about how compression and expansion have shaped the modern military C2 machine, about the skills needed from a commander today, and how the political
Adaptation under fire
Command and control in war is very different to peacetime plans: and then C2 that works well for defensive operations will not necessarily be optimised for offense. The Western experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq threw up a host of lessons which HQs have been implementing: yet the observations of C2 in Ukraine provide a different lens for the problem. Peer and near-peer conflict requires a differe
The Quest for Certainty
Martin van Creveld talked about command being about the 'Quest for Certainty', in order to make the right decisions. But there is, according to Mick Ryan, also a fallacy in certainty. It is a myth that certainty on a battlefield can ever be achieved – whether the delivery of a real time common operating picture, or exact knowledge of enemy disposition and intent. How do we train and prepare comman
The big questions: What's it all about, why is it important, and why now?
The show is about military command and control - sometimes considered the panacea of battles and campaigns - and what it might look like for the fight tonight and the fight tomorrow, whether for irregular warfare or for high end warfighting. The hypothesis is that command is human and control has become increasingly technical/technological. In that, much has been written about command but little e
