The Army Chief has called for a discussion on how the Swedish Army should develop to meet the challenges of the future. In previous posts, I have discussed how modern large-scale warfare affects the Swedish Army. The previous post concluded that a balance between technology and people is needed. In this post, I continue the discussion about the future Swedish Army with a post about decentralization as a strength on a transparent battlefield.
In this post, I argue that command and control of future armies must be designed to function both fully online and offline. The answer to a transparent and technology-saturated battlefield is, paradoxically, more decentralization, not less.
The possibility of a virtually total situational picture together with AI-supported decision-making may tempt centralized command – when the commander sees everything, why not command everything? At the same time, the same transparency makes the units on the battlefield vulnerable where what is seen can be combated. The tension is thus between coordination and survival's demands for dispersion and autonomy.
Within the framework of the above, mission tactics can be seen as more than management philosophy and culture, but also as a design principle for our unit development. When management systems do not work, managers at all levels must be able to act in the spirit of higher managers within given frameworks and objectives. Robustness in management is created by the initiative already being at the bottom, not by trying to re-establish a broken link upwards. Decentralization places higher demands on people lower in the organization – on competence, judgment and trust. Where managers at all levels must be able to lead both with and without technical support.
Modern technology allows for a different ability to coordinate than before. Therefore, dispersed units do not have to be uncoordinated, but modern technology allows for a rapid chain of command where dispersed units can connect when needed and be allocated resources regardless of their organizational affiliation. The point is that decentralization is not the same as fragmentation.
What does this mean for the design of future units? The army units of the future should not be designed to maximize what technology allows in the best case, but to function across the entire scale from fully connected to completely disconnected. Decentralization is not a concession, but a strength – our Swedish tradition of mission tactics gives us a good starting point for the future.
The author is a lieutenant colonel and serves in the Army.