Vanguard Magazine

The challenges in today's deployed HQs are not just the volume of data but the multiple sources of data – subordinate units, coalition, and inter-agency partners, media, and national, coalition, and integral intelligence elements. www.vanguardcanada.com AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2021 31 AI The Tactical HQ and Its Operating Environment There are a few realities that all those try- ing to improve the effectiveness of tacti- cal HQs need to acknowledge: First, an HQ is made up of commanders and staffs (people), technology (computers, commu- nication systems, software applications, et- cetera), and staff processes. The HQ's role is to support the commander in command- ing; command is a human function gov- erned by several elements including laws, orders, experiences, personalities, and tra- ditions. Finally, a tactical HQ must be able to continue to execute command and con- trol regardless of enemy action (cyber or physical attack) or technical failure; there must be alternate means to ensure con- tinuous command and control of the unit or formation. Starting with the view of the Brigade as a Platform (Vanguard January 2019), the networks form the central nervous system of a brigade and its integral units with the headquarters, the commander, and sup- porting staff, being the brain of the for- mation. This idea scales down to units and subunits and up to larger formations and Task Forces. The role of the headquar- ters, in simple terms, is to plan, direct and monitor all operations conducted by the brigade. The real complexity is created as the brigade is expected to operate in a pan- domain environment and must consider the full range of land, air, maritime, space, cyberspace capabilities, while working with joint, interagency, and multinational part- ners. The challenges in today's deployed HQs are not just the volume of data but the multiple sources of data – subordinate units, coalition, and inter-agency partners, media, and national, coalition, and inte- gral intelligence elements. In addition to the range of different sources, the data arrives in multiple formats – text, both structured and unstructured, video, pho- tos, and voice. Further, different sources have different levels of confidence or re- liability and frequently, different data sets represent the same information, entity, or event. Finally, there is the risk of missing data, or worse, believing that there is re- quired data missing, causing staff to take time searching for additional data. Despite all of this, commanders must make deci- sions and issue direction in an increasingly predictive manner to ensure their troops are able to operate inside of the adversary's Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop. The challenges of working in this environment must not be underestimated, the continued effectiveness of tactical HQs will require the optimisation of the people, processes, and technology – AI could be part of the technology component. Artificial Intelligence AI, in simple terms, is the theory and de- velopment of computer systems and al- gorithms able to perform tasks that nor- mally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. Machine Learning (ML) is a form of AI. Common examples of AI include internet search engines, such as Google, image recognition applications, personal assistants such as Siri and Alexa, and autonomous vehicles. As outlined in the Canadian Army publication Advancing with Purpose - The Canadian Army Mod- ernization Strategy, AI is a key technology in the Army's digital transformation, en- abling an increasingly deliberate approach to managing data and exploiting it for de- cision making. It is anticipated that AI will transform some aspects of land operations, including exploiting data and informa- tion to produce intelligence and predictive modelling to support decision-making, both important functions of tactical HQs. This will lead to an information advantage in military operations, gained through the integration and aggregation of high- quality data from a wide variety of internal and external sources. The aim is to ensure commanders at all levels have access to the data they need to inform decision-making and improve operational effectiveness at the speed of relevance.

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