FEATURED CASE STUDIES

Adaptive Architectures for Command and Control (A2C2)

Expeditionary Strike Group

The Problem

Military organizations need Command and Control (C2) structures that facilitate effective large scale coordination and efficiency in mission performance. However, engineering these C2 organizations is a daunting task. How do you design a command team organization for a given mission? How do you derive human requirements for the organization? How do you evaluate its performance for the mission? How would you design qualities such as adaptability and robustness into the organization?

The Solution

Aptima has addressed these issues as part of the Adaptive Architectures in Command and Control (A2C2) program, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

Aptima has collaborated with a world-class team of universities and laboratories to study multidisciplinary issues in high-performance adaptive organizations. The A2C2 research program seeks to advance the state-of-the-art of theories and quantitative models of organizational performance. The A2C2 program now stands on the threshold of producing and disseminating results that could shape the structure of tomorrow’s fast-moving, adaptive, flexible military forces.

The A2C2 program is successful not just for its mission, but for its innovative interdisciplinary methodology. Model-based experimentation is used to better understand the relationships between organizational structure and performance. The figure below depicts the process that begins with theoretical and operational concepts developed with operational subject matter experts and moves in an iterative fashion through modeling and experimentation. Human-in-the-loop experiments are then conducted, often using Aptima's DDD adaptable simulation for sociotechnical systems.

A2C2 Diagram

This model-test-model-experiment process leads to well specified hypotheses and precisely defined measures using Aptima’s A-Measure human performance assessment system. A-Measure is an end-to-end solution for implementing, collecting, and using performance measures to maximize simulation-based training effectiveness and increase operational readiness. The resulting operational concepts are brought back to decision makers, providing low cost empirical evidence as they make choices about organizational change.

The Results

Using this research paradigm, Aptima and its A2C2 collaborators have increased understanding of decision-making organizations and provided a quantitative basis for the systematic design of such organizations using Aptima’s Model of Organizations, Systems, and Technologies (MOST). The focus of MOST is to produce teams and organizations that have a balanced workload, can be rapidly deployed, and are of minimal size. Aptima has made substantial, award-winning contributions to the academic and operational literature in this area, providing guidance for creating more adaptable, higher efficiency C2 organizations.

A2C2’s research has garnered the attention of military decision makers. In recent years the A2C2 program has investigated and recommended improvements to complex structures of fielded C2 organizations such as the Navy’s Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) and has conducted modeling and simulation studies for the Strategic Studies Group to asses the potential merits of FORCEnet organizational structures.