Robust Coordination Under Extreme Uncertainty

During recent conflicts, the U.S. has benefited from complete air dominance. Such dominance has allowed us to control or even eliminate many, if not most, sources of uncertainty affecting air missions. The command and control systems that have emerged from these conditions were designed to optimize their performance. However, as shown in [9], such an approach yields high performing but brittle systems, unable to tolerate severe or even moderate uncertainty. The current geopolitical environment indicates that in future conflicts we will not be afforded the luxury to completely control uncertainty. Denied environments, in which sensor and communication black- outs are long compared to the mission time constants, are particularly challenging. The trend to substitute sophisticated and unaffordable platforms with a team of cheaper simpler ones, including unmanned assets, further complicates the situation. As the mission team gets fragmented by these blackouts, local knowledge of the battle situation becomes stale and opportunities for coordination are limited, rendering current command and control systems inoperable.