Archetypical C2 Organization Design for Ever Increasing Technological Autonomy: An Unmanned Aircraft System Illustration
Abstract
According to U.S. doctrine, command and control (C2) represents the most important military activity of all, and it recognizes people as the central element. Given the complementary importance of technology, however, it is insightful to view C2 in terms of socio-technical system design. In such a context, it is important for any design to balance its socio and technical subsystems. Unfortunately, the rapidly advancing technologies associated with autonomous systems are pulling C2 designs out of balance, particularly where autonomous agents, robots, unmanned vehicles, and other machines are increasingly replacing people in organizations. This raises the important, open, research question of how socio-technical C2 systems should be (re)designed to (re)balance the rapid technological advance and broad proliferation of autonomous systems. Borrowing from success in engineering and the physical sciences, we seek to leverage known and well-understood principles to approach this design problem. We draw specifically from Organization Design (OD). We build upon OD to characterize a principled, socio-technical system design method, the use and utility of which we illustrate through application to unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). We begin by outlining two contrasting use cases in the context of maritime interdiction operations (MIO): (1) a single, organically operated unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in sparse, locally controlled airspace; and (2) a large number of manned and unmanned aircraft operated by non-allied nations in dense, uncontrolled airspace.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA586824
Entities
People
- Mark E. Nissen
- W. D. Place
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School