How the C2 community can sustain current readiness while deliberately shaping future architectures and human‑machine teaming
Executive summary
The command, control, and air battle management (C2ABM) enterprise must adopt a “both/and” posture: sustain and optimize today’s legacy platforms and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and deliberately shape the next generation of architectures, human‑machine teaming, and mission metrics. This article explains why those lines of effort are complementary, not competing, and offers practical, programmatic steps to ensure the force remains ready now and relevant later.
The false dichotomy: now versus next
Portraying interest in future C2ABM capabilities as mere techno‑optimism creates a false choice: preserve legacy systems or pursue modernization. In reality, operational necessity drives calls for new capabilities. Adversaries are fielding integrated sensors, long‑range fires, and sophisticated electronic attack that change how command and control must operate. Responding only with incremental TTP tweaks risks tactical survival but strategic irrelevance.
The Department of Defense’s emphasis on cross‑domain, data‑centric concepts such as Joint All‑Domain Command and Control (JADC2) underscores the need to work on legacy sustainment and future architectures in parallel. See the DoD overview on JADC2 for context.
Key point: wanting better tools is not a cognitive failing — it is a professional response to changing mission demands. Operators can be expert stewards of today’s systems while also helping design tomorrow’s.
Why operator involvement must start early
Waiting until a platform is fielded to consider how it will change C2 guarantees costly rework and poor operational fit. Early operator participation in prototyping, wargaming, and experimentation ensures that human‑machine interfaces, CONOPS, and TTPs evolve alongside hardware and software.
RAND’s work on command and control modernization and human‑machine teaming highlights the value of iterative experimentation and operator feedback. When operators are embedded in iterative trials, programs:
• identify realistic human‑automation task boundaries sooner;
• surface integration and interoperability gaps earlier;
• shorten the learning curve at fielding;
• reduce the risk of delivering capability that is technically impressive but operationally unusable.
Practical implication: make operator participation in prototype trials and wargames a programmatic requirement, not an optional add‑on.
Measure mission outcomes, not platform DLOs
Platform designers naturally evaluate success against platform‑centric Desired Level of Operationality (DLO) metrics. That is useful, but insufficient. Meeting self‑referential DLOs does not prove mission effectiveness in contested, multi‑domain scenarios.
Adopt mission‑centric evaluation criteria that measure outcomes in realistic, contested exercises:
• detection‑to‑decision timelines under electronic attack;
• resilience of data flows when nodes are degraded or denied;
• interoperability with joint and allied sensor and shooter networks;
• ability to sustain decision advantage across distributed nodes.
The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly emphasized the need for measurable, mission‑focused goals to guide cross‑domain C2 efforts.
Result: acquisition, training, and experimentation align with the real yardstick, whether the force can execute the mission in the environments it will actually face.
Preserve the mission, not just the platform
Legacy systems such as the E-3G AWACS and ground transportable radars have delivered decades of value and should be optimized where they remain relevant, but preserving aircraft or radar hardware alone is not the objective — the objective is decision advantage and effective air battle management across domains. If the C2ABM community defines its identity by a specific airframe or antenna, it risks unnecessarily preserving hardware while the mission migrates to distributed sensing, resilient networks, and automated decision aids.
Transition principle: upgrades to legacy platforms are valuable, but they must be part of an architectural plan that enables incremental insertion of new capabilities and interoperability with emerging fabrics.
Five practical recommendations
1. Institutionalize a dual‑track portfolio. Fund and staff both sustainment/optimization programs for legacy systems and a continuous prototyping pipeline that includes operators, acquisition, and industry. Link experimentation outcomes to acquisition pathways so validated prototypes can transition rapidly.
2. Embed operators early. Make operator participation in prototype trials, wargames, and experimentation a programmatic requirement to reduce integration risk and shape usable interfaces.
3. Adopt mission‑centric metrics. Evaluate systems by mission outcomes in contested scenarios rather than only by platform DLOs; use those metrics to prioritize investments and retirements.
4. Invest in human‑machine teaming and training. Scale training pipelines that teach operators to work with automation, microservices, and distributed sensor fabrics; human‑machine teaming is central to decision advantage.
5. Design for incremental integration. Require open, modular interfaces and data standards so new capabilities can be inserted incrementally, and legacy systems can interoperate with emerging fabrics without wholesale replacement.
Conclusion
Professional discord about the pace and priority of modernization is healthy and necessary. The right posture for C2ABM is “both/and” – maximize the effectiveness of today’s platforms and TTPs while deliberately shaping tomorrow’s architectures, human‑machine teaming, and mission metrics. That approach preserves readiness now and ensures relevance later; it protects the mission, not just the platforms. If the enterprise is not debating these tradeoffs publicly and professionally, it is not listening to the conversation that needs to be had.
Nacho is currently a System Architect for Blue Sky Innovators and serves as a SETA for PAE C3BM responsible for warfighter integration for DAF Integrated Fires C2. Nacho is a retired Air Battle Manager, with background in JSTARS, ASOC, AOC, CRC, and AMMO. Nacho was also Product Owner for UI/UX industry solutions.
Photo by Sami Abdullah on Pexels
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