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A Control-Theoretic Unification of Defensive and Offensive C2

This article by dr. Abder Rezak Benaskeur of Defence Research and Development Canada, establishes a formal framework for Command and Control (C2) by mapping military operations to control theory, utilizing this mathematical lens to analyze the strategic relationship and underlying dichotomy between defensive and offensive postures. This operational dichotomy is shown to be isomorphic to the foundational control-theoretic duality between disturbance rejection (feedback control) and setpoint tracking (feedforward control). Expanding on this isomorphism, the paper advances three additional core theses. First, it establishes the fundamental primacy of defence by demonstrating that offensive postures are not independent objectives, but rather derivative, anticipatory control loops engineered to neutralize disturbances, and thus reduce entropy, based on predictions generated at the same echelon or received from higher command. Second, the paper analytically proves that defence is the more challenging posture because, while the attacker solves a simple maximization problem of finding a single path to high entropy, the defender must solve a computationally harder min-max problem to maintain low entropy against all possible disturbance vectors. Finally, the paper redefines the interaction of opposing forces, proposing that defence is governed by vulnerability minimization (robustness) whereas offence is driven by capability maximization (control authority). Ultimately, this framework provides a rigorous syntax for analyzing modern warfare, enabling a deeper understanding of strategic confrontations and the prediction of their outcomes, while concluding that future operational