Dynamic C2 design for asymmetric advantage: teams of autonomous systems and people

Abstract

The technologic capabilities of autonomous systems (AS) continue to accelerate, and integrated performance by AS and people working together can be superior to that of either AS or people working alone. We refer to this increasingly important phenomenon as Teams of Autonomous Systems and People (TASP), and through our recent research - representing the current state of the art - we have demonstrated computational experimentation capability in the TASP domain. We have also elucidated several technology trends indicating that unmanned aircraft may be diverging away from operating and behaving like their manned counterparts, even though phenomena such as swarming and mission integration appear to be upon us. This stream of research seeks to stay five to ten years ahead of practice, which enables us to anticipate both issues and opportunities in an area that remains under researched: C2 of autonomous systems. In this technical report, we build upon our computational experiments to address how TASP C2 can be designed for asymmetric advantage, with particular emphasis on dynamic design, through which an organization can increase agility and outperform otherwise peer or equivalent organizations.