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From Concept to Capability: In the NATO's C2 of Multi-Domain Operations - History, Evolution and Challenges
The NATO alliance has been adapting the US Army concept of Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) to better align its capabilities with the return of the threat of state-on-state conflict in the second decade of the 21st Century. While definitions of MDO have taken time to consolidate, these definitions are all consistent in seeking a capability that can operate in situations that call for operations that involved more than just the three traditional domains (air, land and sea) and include space and cyber-space operations. These two new NATO domains, in turn, imply engagement with more than just the military services of the nations of the Alliance, but also depend on capabilities housed in other government departments, agencies and in societies. These are also domains where, by some reckoning, engagements with other actors already exceed thresholds of healthy state-on-state competition. How such operations can be commanded and controlled has concurrently absorbed the Alliance, where even the maturation of ‘Jointness’ in its Joint Forces Commands remains a work-in-progress. Existing concepts such as supported/supporting interrelationship (SSI) have been suggested as means to support MDO to a degree, in providing a mechanism by which peer commands with authorities over capabilities that can operate in a single domain but often in more domains, may interact in a manner that allows for synchronisation across multiple domains.
This paper will analyse the history of these developments, focusing on the mechanisms used to drive change, and challenges that have had to be confronted for the Alliance to mature and realise MDO and SSI in doctrine and processes. Some of the limitations of SSI will be identified, suggesting MDO C2 (as it seems to rely on the application of SSI and involves non-military actors) remains an on-going challenge. The analysis will show that maturing the C2 for MDO in NATO is limited by factors such as education and training, the churn of the posting cycle, organisational culture, and inhibitors to deep collaboration that provides seamless coherence in patterns of interaction across operators in multiple domains. To this end, this study offers a valuable use-case in C2 capability governance, providing a further contribution to the work of NATO-RTG-HFM-342.
