Redefining Command and Control

Abstract

Human creativity, initiative, resolve, problem solving, leadership, and trust play crucial roles in military operations. For command and control (C²) to be effective in the full range of missions that modern militaries encounter, it is essential that it be human-centred. We have previously argued that C²’s human component has been chronically under-emphasized and under-researched (Pigeau & McCann, 1995). The military has gotten swept away all too easily by the allure of technology (for example, battlefield digitization): as a result, C²has become obscured in conceptualizations of rigid structure and process. We have also argued that existing definitions of command and control have provided little guidance either to the military or to industry for allocating the scarce resources necessary for supporting command (Pigeau & McCann, 1995). To redress this problem, McCann and Pigeau (1996) offered a new definition of C², one that “emphasizes the critical role of Command [that is, human will] while acknowledging the necessary contribution of Control [that is, technology]” (p. 533). In this chapter, we will explore this new definition’s implications, and we will demonstrate its explanatory power for elucidating C²organizational structures and leadership.

Our soldiers… were't about to let impassable roads stand in the way of getting food to the elderly. When the vehicles had gone as far as they could go, these same soldiers threw rucksacks on their backs, filled them with food and then ran up the snow‐covered roads to greet the eternally grateful "snowed‐in."

—McNally (1997, p.5), about a peacekeeping operation in Bosnia

I held to the old‐fashioned idea that it helped the spirits of the men to see the Old Man up there, in the snow and sleet and the mud, sharing the same cold, miserable existence they had to endure.

—General Matthew Ridgway, quoted in Schnabel (1964, p. 9)

[Private- Haggard now took charge of the situation, in the absence of leadership from any NCO… With the help of [Private] Berthelot, a Bren gunner, [Private] Haggard now organized and attack on [a] position… which was subsequently found to have been held by about 50[enemy soldiers] with four machine‐guns

—Memorandum, Historical officer at Canadian Military HQ at Dieppe, 1942

In the execution of my orders I allowed divisional commanders as much liberty of action as possible While I sometimes felt their methods could have been bettered, I considered that they would execute a plan they had made themselves and believed in with more vigour than a potentially better plan, imposed from above.

—Qoute in McAndrew (1996) from the memoirs of General E. L. M. Burns, who commanded 1st Canadian Corps during the Italy campaign in World War II

Lawrence had irrevocably broken with traditional methods of fighting a war. He had “thrown away the books.” He started this new kind of war, his mind uncluttered, unbiased, free, and ready to create from original materials, battle‐winning combinations.

—Mrazek (1968, p 131), describing Lawrence of Arabia