Date of Award

Spring 2009

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering

Committee Director

Ghaith Rabadi

Committee Member

Shannon Bowling

Committee Member

Andreas Tolk

Committee Member

Steven Mains

Abstract

While the nature of and the approach to command and control is evolving in order to meet the challenges of Information Age warfare, the essential functions that must be accomplished remain constant. One of those essential functions is the arrangement of the assets within a combat force. Certainly, the many different ways to arrange a given set of assets will have different impacts on the combat effectiveness of the force. Some arrangements will enable self-synchronization, while other arrangements will impede it. How then, should an Information Age combat force be organized in order to optimize its effectiveness?

The concept of Network Centric Operations (NCO) represents a shift from traditional attrition-based approaches to a warfighting style that emphasizes speed of command and self-synchronization. One goal of NCO is to field a force that is capable of achieving information superiority, thus enabling a massing of effects instead of the traditional massing of forces that will disrupt the enemy's strategy and preclude potential courses of action. NCO shifts the focus from the numbers and capabilities of platforms toward the information-based aspects of force employment: information collection, communication, and exploitation. Central to the ability of a force to manage and exploit information is its connectivity: the existence, capacity, reliability, and other attributes of the links that connect its platforms, command and control centers, and other entities. A fundamental problem is to develop an understanding of the influence of connectivity on force effectiveness that can lead eventually to quantitative prediction and guidelines for design and employment. This research presents an initial attempt to achieve such understanding through the quantitative analysis of a model of NCO focused on the correlation between connectivity and effectiveness.

DOI

10.25777/8ndb-fg13

ISBN

9781109404210

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