Survival of the Fittest: The Evolution of U.S. Military Command and Control Structures During and After the Cold War

2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-131
Author(s):  
Jason D. Wood
Author(s):  
Ayokunle Olumuyiwa Omobowale

Most of the discourse on development aid in Africa has been limited to assistance from Western countries and those provided by competing capitalist and socialist blocs during the Cold war era. Japan, a nation with great economic and military capabilities; its development assistance for Africa is encapsulated in the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) initiative. The TICAD started in 1993 and Japan has so far held 5 TICAD meetings between 1993 and 2013 during which Africa’s development challenges and Japan’s development assistance to the continent were discussed. The emphasis on “ownership”, “self-help” and “partnership” are major peculiar characteristics of Japan’s development aid that puts the design, implementation and control of development projects under the control of recipient countries. This is a major departure from the usual practice in international development assistance where recipient countries are bound by clauses that somewhat puts the control of development aid in the hands of the granting countries. Such binding clauses have often been described as inimical to the successful administration of the aids and development in recipient countries. Though Japan’s development aid to Africa started only in 1993, by the 2000s, Japan was the topmost donor to Africa. This paper examines the context of Japan’s development aid to Africa by analyzing secondary data sourced from literature and secondary statistics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-111
Author(s):  
R Ramakrishnan

The current COVID-19 virus has put the entire world in lockdown, creating one of the worst times of a VUCA world. The changes that are happening because of the pandemic are large scale and occur suddenly. There is a shortage of leadership everywhere. Leaders are unprepared to lead effectively. In this fast-changing and disruptive environment, command and control structures fail. Leaders are expected to act on incomplete or insufficient information. They do not know where to start to drive change as increased complexity makes it difficult. Leaders lack time to reflect and end up acting too quickly or acting too late as they get stuck in analysis paralysis. They are far removed from the source and are forced to act with a limited understanding of events and their meanings. The role and type of leadership are being tested as we are trying to come out of this crisis. Leaders cannot predict the future but need to make sense of it in order to thrive. This paper would analyse challenges that are being faced by leaders in this critical period and how these can be converted into opportunities like a vaccine for the virus.


Author(s):  
Alma Schaafstal ◽  
Raegan M. Hoeft ◽  
Martin van Schaik

The process of training teams increasingly occurs in synthetic environments. However, it is often still modeled after live team training, including the disadvantages of live training, for example, the fact that all teammates must be available. This paper explores overcoming the disadvantages of human teammates in training teams in synthetic environments, while keeping the advantages of learning in a collaborative and cooperative fashion. Simulated teammates are a promising alternative because they are always available, may be modeled after experienced training personnel, and may be more cost effective in the long run. This paper details a research approach towards the definition of requirements for simulated teammates. In our approach, we carry out a set of experiments using confederates as simulated teammates, in a well-controlled simulation of a military command-and-control task The results of a first experiment show slightly better teamwork skills for those teams trained with simulated teammates.


2015 ◽  
pp. 1231-1245
Author(s):  
Madjid Tavana ◽  
Dawn A. Trevisani ◽  
Dennis T. Kennedy

The increasing complexity in Military Command and Control (C2) systems has led to greater vulnerability due to system availability and integrity caused by internal vulnerabilities and external threats. Several studies have proposed measures of availability and integrity for the assets in the C2 systems using precise and certain measures (i.e., the exact number of attacks on the availability and the integrity, the number of countermeasures for the availability and integrity attacks, the effectiveness of the availability and integrity countermeasure in eliminating the threats, and the financial impact of each attack on the availability and integrity of the assets). However, these measures are often uncertain in real-world problems. The source of uncertainty can be vagueness or ambiguity. Fuzzy logic and fuzzy sets can represent vagueness and ambiguity by formalizing inaccuracies inherent in human decision-making. In this paper, the authors extend the risk assessment literature by including fuzzy measures for the number of attacks on the availability and the integrity, the number of countermeasures for the availability and integrity attacks, and the effectiveness of the availability and integrity countermeasure in eliminating these threats. They analyze the financial impact of each attack on the availability and integrity of the assets and propose a comprehensive cyber-risk assessment system for the Military C2 in the fuzzy environment.


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