Exclusive content: Interviews, Presentations and latest insights and more

In this presentation, Çağatay Soyer, AFSC Programme Manager, examines how NATO’s Alliance Future Surveillance and Control (AFSC) programme is redefining the C4ISR capabilities needed for 2035 and beyond. The session breaks down key architectural choices, cross-domain integration priorities, and the operational lessons influencing the Alliance’s future surveillance and control construct.

The importance of C4ISR cannot be understated, as shown in current conflicts, ineffective C4ISR can lead operations to suboptimal results at best and disaster at worst. To this end NATO is under constant pressure to ensure the forces under its remit remain fully optimised. Speaking on the subject, Matt Roper, Chief joint ISR of the NCIA gives a concise state-of-play of the C4ISR situation in NATO and where it might be headed.

Gearing up to meet near-peer competitors requires forces to accept that the advantages of C4ISR they may have faced in an asymmetric theatre may be degraded or destroyed. Near-peers can commit more significant and sophisticated resources to prevent our command and intelligence advantage. This requires a concrete and profound change in paradigm thinking in that having only one way of doing C4ISR is a grave mistake and that the concept of resilience needs to become the norm. In this interview, Alec Bain, a principal C2 analyst from the UK’s defence lab, DSTL, goes into detail on his thoughts on:

• The importance of resilience
• How the concept of resilience needs to go beyond just the technical and into Socio-Technical
• The current state and the future of UK C4ISR adopting resilience and its implications.
  

When facing a near-peer on the world stage, the one who can make the best decisions the fastest will hold the advantage. This decision-making advantage will be crucial as it will best use the available, if not limited, resources. Recognising this, forces face several internal and external challenges in achieving this, whether it be the challenges posed by massive quantities of data across domains that need to be processed or the activities and technologies employed by near-peers that try to degrade your decision-making capabilities. The US response to this is Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), a strategy for combining sensors across domains, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and effectors to achieve decision superiority. On the surface, this strategy seems exactly what Europe needs in the face of a more aggressive Russia. However, challenges abound. This paper explores JADC2 and its applicability to the European context.