In 1979 the US Department of Defense sponsored a series of command and control (C²) colloquia which concluded that there is no adequate foundation for a theory of C² and hence no principles for overall system design and evaluation (see also Chapter 1). Despite the massive investment by NATO in C² systems research development and implementation in the intervening period, a fundamental metho dology for the design of C² has not emerged. This is not surprising, since high-level C² systems are essentially an extension of basic human decision processes by means of procedures, organisations, equipments, situation assessment (threat assessment) and resource allocation. C² systems are among the largest and most complex real time resource management systems known to man; their effectiveness is severely limited by lack of speed, data saturation and the cognitive limits of the human decision maker.

Inspec keywords: expert systems; resource allocation; decision making; military equipment; command and control systems

Other keywords: expert systems; US Department of Defense; command and control colloquia; cognitive limits; C² systems; research development; situation assessment; overall system design; resource management systems; NATO; data saturation; organisations; equipments; resource allocation; human decision processes

Subjects: Military control systems