A Foundation for Evolving Command and Control Activities Overview

This paper describes a theory of constant foundation for evolving C2 activities through time and space. The theory is conducive to C2 domain analysis and engineering implementation. Based on an established scientific problem-solving paradigm in complex space, the Common Agility Space (CAS) representation, to enable the description, measurement, and analysis of C2 activities. CAS codifies two C2 perspectives: 1. (physical, information, cognitive, social) and 2. (tactical, operational, strategic). In addition to providing a unifying big picture for strategic activities, the CAS representation is instantiatable using existing scientific and engineering tools to assist composable edge tactical activities. Structural momentum of an organization and abundance of unfiltered information are two overhead factors that can consume inordinate resources to support decision making. The CAS theory is able to integrate the innate organization processes, environmental inputs, and organizational intentions to align resources to achieve desired effects. This paper first gives an introduction to the CAS foundational problem solving paradigm, explains how CAS is a flexible and unifying representation of C2 activities, describes situation assessment and Effect Based Operation (EBO) using the CAS context, gives a scenario using CAS, and finally briefly lists some possible extension of CAS in both the theoretic and engineering directions.