Listen to the 'Command and Control' podcast by Peter Roberts

The military sometimes promote and appoint leaders who are truly terrible. Sometimes this isn’t their fault, they are not always narcissistic or toxic: sometimes they are just not up to the job. But the issue for staff is how to handle poor leaders. Professor William Scott Jackson from Oxford University is perhaps the foremost researcher in this field, and he brings with him a wealth of experience and lessons from the private and commercial world – much of it translates into the military world without much imagination.

In this episode he talks about succession management, micro solutions for bad leaders, decision-making, the importance of thinking time, differentiated capability theory, and Blue Ocean Strategy. You decide how much of this translates to the Profession of Arms.

If there is some unresolved tension in the ideas of mission command and synchronisation – particularly within the MDO concept – then it could be more useful to think about the USMC idea of Coupling; of providing linkage between warfare activities that are needed to execute a task and/or mission.

Instead of simply connecting everything because it’s possible, the Corps advocates for an approach that provides the means on a case-by-case basis. Interestingly, it is explained best in MCDP5 (USMC Planning) penned back in 1997, and signed off by the legend who is General Charles C. Krulac.

Talking about C2 (reality and theory) is best done with a marine and Peter was joined for this discussion by Sean Welch, a marine with the intellectual and operational credentials to offer some really important perspectives.

Imagine sitting on a battlefield and trying to figure out what is happening with only your ears to guide you; your guidance is based on orders written weeks or months ago, and the last time you got an update of where your own forces where was a day old (at best). That, in essence, is submarine warfare. There is no constant information flow for situational awareness and communication (of any kind) endangers your existence; so submarine commanders are required to make decisions based on a series of assumptions about a myriad of variables and use their experience, judgement, advice from their team, and a deep understanding of their adversary. 

Building people who can do this – so different to most other warfare experiences – requires a special process: The Perisher. Peter talks to Phil Titterton about command and control of submarines, his experiences in the Royal Navy’s submarine service, and about waterspace management (submarine control measures). Now you can open your eyes...

Former NATO Sec Gen Jaap de Hoop Scheffer talks about what it takes to make effective command relationships work at the highest level of Pol/Mil C2: the tensions between domestic agendas and international obligations, decision-making in NATO, and how to achieve coherence and agreement in matters of war. 

The conclusion, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that the level of co-operation between politicians and their military counterparts is not something that can be scripted or forced: it depends more on personalities, behaviours, and shared interests than on orders and formal hierarchies. Reflecting on successes and failures, Jaap makes for compelling listening.

In providing commanders with the ability to command and control, computerised systems have been in use for more than 50 years. Their evolution from siloed systems inside individual units, moving across task forces, then to covering theatres has helped operators and HQ staffs orchestrate military means with increasing efficiency and lethality.

The change in the last decade – according to Andrew Graham – has been in moving from enabling these domain-to-domain C2 structures to talk to each other, to one that has to integrate the data from each platform system to be seem by everyone else.

Now that idea - based on an assumption of ubiquitous and constant connectivity - has evolved again. How can you operate a C2 system when to transmit data might spell certain death?

The captain of a warship has, sometimes, godlike omnipotence. Does this mean that naval command and control has some unique characteristics that need to be better understood in order to be integrated into the ‘modern’ rubric?

Vice Admiral Martin Connell, Second Sea Lord in the British Royal Navy, talks to Peter about what’s unique about naval C2, and whether the education and development of leaders in the Royal Navy is good enough.

What makes a good and a great military leader? The myth of a divine, born leader is very popular, but we actually know better than that. Science has given us the evidence to understand what traits and characteristics imbue a person with the skills and experience to become a great leader. For this, we actually know how to select them based on the very different requirements in wartime and peacetime. It is also popular to talk about leadership and followership as two distinct functions; the term 'servant leader' has become fashionable amongst military professionals as an attempt to delineate the boundaries between these two groups, yet still keep the hierarchy. Expert analysis is harder to find, however – for that we need to turn to science and a human psychologist.

The podcast host: Dr Peter Roberts

Dr Peter Roberts is the host of the 'Command and Control' podcast. He is both a Royal Navy veteran and the former Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute.

In addition, he is a regular global commentator on military affairs and the host of a popular defence podcast called Western Way of War.

The podcast episodes and release

The ‘Command and Control’ podcast is planned to have 8 episodes.

The first episode is released on June 2023, and the last one will be a live Q&A session at DSEI London on September 12 2023.