Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Complexity: the dark side of network-centric warfare

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Cognition, Technology & Work Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Military theoretical considerations suggest that a networked command and control architecture will provide a more effective form of command and control under complex operations that demand a high tempo of action. This article presents an experimental study with the purpose to examine team performance under different conditions of command and control architectures and their resilience to complexity. The experiment was performed with the task to extinguish simulated fires in a microworld. Three factors were varied in the experiment: command and control architecture, the number of simulated units, and tempo. The dependent variable was the number of lost cells in the microworld. Three command and control architectures were investigated; command by negation, directive command, and a control condition. The general conclusion from this experiment was that all command and control architectures performed equally poorly under the condition of many subordinate units and fast tempo. This was in contradiction to suggestions made in the military theoretical literature. Command by negation was presumably the more effective command and control architecture under the other conditions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alberts DS, Hayes RE (2007) Planning: complex endeavors. CCRP Publications, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Alberts DS, Garstka JJ, Stein FP (2000) Network centric warfare: developing and leveraging information superiority, 2nd edn. National Defense University Press, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Alberts DS, Garstka JJ, Hayes RE, Signori DA (2001) Understanding information age warfare. CCRP Publication Series, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  • van Alstyne M (1997) The state of network organization: a survey in three frameworks. J Organ Comput Electron Commer 7(2–3):83–151. doi:10.1080/10919392.1997.9681069

    Google Scholar 

  • Arquilla J, Ronfeldt DF (2000) Swarming: the future of conflict. RAND, Santa Monica, CA

    Google Scholar 

  • Ashby WR (1956) An introduction to cybernetics. Chapman & Hall, London

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Brehmer B (1991) Time scales, distributed decision making and modern information technology. John Wiley & Sons Inc, Chichester, pp 193–200

    Google Scholar 

  • Brehmer B (1992) Dynamic decision making: human control of complex systems. Acta Psychol 81(3):211–241

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brehmer B (1995) Feedback delays in dynamic decision making. In: Frensch PA, Funke J (eds) Complex problem solving: the European perspective. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale NJ, pp 103–130

    Google Scholar 

  • Brehmer B (1998) Effects of time pressure in fully connected and hierarchical architectures of distributed decision-making. In: Wærn Y (ed) Co-operative process management: cognition and information technology, Taylor & Francis, London, pp 131–143

  • Brehmer B (2000) Dynamic decision making in command and control. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, pp 233–248

    Google Scholar 

  • Brehmer B (2002) Fördelat beslutsfattande som modell för självsynkronisering i NBF—Rapport 1 från projektet Network Warfare (in Swedish)

  • Brehmer B (2009) Command without commanders. In: 14th international command and control research and technology symposium (ICCRTS), CCRP Publications, Department of Defense

  • Brehmer B, Dörner D (1993) Experiments with computer-simulated microworlds: escaping both the narrow straits of the laboratory and the deep blue sea of the field study. Comput Human Behav 9(2/3):171–184. doi:10.1016/0747-5632(93)90005-D, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/074756329390005D

  • Brehmer B, Svenmarck P (1995) Distributed decisionmaking in dynamic environments: time scales and architectures of decisionmaking. In: Caverni JP (eds) Contributions to decision making. Elsevier, New York, pp 155–174

    Google Scholar 

  • Castells M (1997) The power of identity, The information age: economy, society and culture, vol 2, Blackwell Publishers, Malden, MA

  • Castells M (1998) End of millennium, The information age: economy, society and culture, vol 3, Blackwell Publishers, Malden, MA

  • Castells M (2000) The rise of the network society, The information age: economy, society and culture, vol 1, 2nd edn. Blackwell Publishers, Malden, MA

  • Cebrowski AK, Garstka JJ (1998) Network-centric warfare: its origin and future. US Nav Inst Proc 124(1):28–35

    Google Scholar 

  • Conant RC, Ashby WR (1970) Every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system. Int J Syst Sci 1(2):89–97

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Espejo R, Harnden R (1989) The Viable system model: interpretations and applications of Stafford Beer’s VSM. Wiley, Chichester

    Google Scholar 

  • Espejo R, Reyes A (2011) Organizational systems. Springer, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gongora T, von Riekhoff H (2000) Toward a revolution in military affairs? Defense and security at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Contributions in military studies, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT

    Google Scholar 

  • Gonzalez C, Vanyukov P, Martin MK (2005) The use of microworlds to study dynamic decision making. Comput Human Behav 21(2):273–286

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Granlund R (1997) C 3fire: a microworld supporting emergency management training. Licenciate thesis, Department of Computer and Information Science. Linköpings University

  • Granlund R (1998) The C3FIRE microworld. In: Wærn Y (ed) Co-operative process management: cognition and information technology. Taylor & Francis, London, pp 91–102

    Google Scholar 

  • Granlund R (2002) Monitoring distributed teamwork training. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Computer and Information Science. Linköpings University

  • Granlund R (2012) C3fire.org. http://c3fire.org/doc/simulation/simulation.en.shtml#Fire

  • Groth L (1999) Future organizational design: the scope for the IT-based enterprise. Wiley series in information systems, Wiley, Chichester

    Google Scholar 

  • Labbé JS (2000) Time, tempo and command. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, pp 111–125

    Google Scholar 

  • March JG, Simon HA (1958) Organizations. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Mintzberg H (1989) Mintzberg on management: inside our strange world of organizations. Free Press, Collier Macmillan, New York, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Perrow C (1986) Complex organizations: a critical essay, 3rd edn. McGraw-Hill, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Persson M, Rigas G (2007) A measure of situation apprehension, outcome prediction and performance in one microworld. In: Proceedings of the 10th IFAC/IFIP/IFORS/IEA symposium on analysis, design, and evaluation of human-machine systems (IFAC-HMS 2007), Elsevier

  • Potts D (2003) The big issue: command and combat in the information age. CCRP publication series, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  • Rigas G, Persson M (2003) RTMTR. Computer software

  • Rigas G, Persson M, Brehmer B (2003) Är självsynkronisering möjlig? Effekter av tidspress och komplexitet på ledningsarkitekturers effektivitet II—Rapport 5 från projektet NetWork Warfare (in Swedish)

  • Salmon PM, Stanton NA, Walker GH, Jenkins DP, Rafferty L (2010) Is it really better to share? distributed situation awareness and its implications for collaborative system design. Theor Issues Ergon Sci 11(1–2):58–83. doi:10.1080/14639220903009953, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14639220903009953

  • Schrage M (1990) Shared minds: the new technologies of collaboration. Random House, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Schrage M (1995) No more teams!: mastering the dynamics of creative collaboration, 1st edn. Currency Doubleday, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott WR (1998) Organizations: rational, natural, and open systems, 4th edn. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ

    Google Scholar 

  • Stanton N, Baber C, Walker G, Houghton R, McMaster R, Stewart R, Harris D, Jenkins D, Young M, Salmon P (2008) Development of a generic activities model of command and control. Cogn Technol Work 10:209–220. doi:10.1007/s10111-007-0097-5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stanton NA, Salmon PM, Walker GH, Jenkins DP (2010) Is situation awareness all in the mind? Theor Issues Ergon Sci 11(1–2):29–40. doi:10.1080/14639220903009938, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14639220903009938

  • Stewart KG (2010) The evolution of command approach. In: 15th international command and control research and technology symposium (ICCRTS). CCRP Publications, Department of Defense

  • Svenmarck P (1998a) Local co-ordination in dynamic environments: theories and co-ordination support. Lic. thesis, Linkoping University

  • Svenmarck P (1998b) Visualized co-ordination support in distributed decision making. Taylor & Francis, London, pp 103–116

    Google Scholar 

  • Webster F (2002) Theories of the information society, 2nd edn. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Widder W (2002) Auftragstaktik and Innere Führung: trademarks of german leadership. Mil Rev 82(5):3–9

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Berndt Brehmer and Dr. Jan Kuylenstierna for their valuable and helpful feedback on several versions of this paper. We also thank our reviewers for their valuable and insightful comments. This research was supported by the Swedish Armed Forces Research and Development Program.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Command and Control Studies Division, Department of military studies, Swedish National Defence College, PO Box 278 05, 115 93, Stockholm, Sweden

    Mats Persson & Georgios Rigas

Authors
  1. Mats Persson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Georgios Rigas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mats Persson.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Persson, M., Rigas, G. Complexity: the dark side of network-centric warfare. Cogn Tech Work 16, 103–115 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-012-0248-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-012-0248-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation