Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the conception of speed in command and control systems’ impact on human thought and to introduce the notion of “Combat Integrated Learning”. In a context of increased complexity, unpredictability and ambiguity, adaptation not only concerns agility in terms of speed, but through resilience, self- healing and – in lack of calculable consequence ethics – an Aristotelian notion of virtue as a stable equilibrium of the soul as a basis for choice of action “knowingly and for its own sake”. As humans we have many cognitive functions which impact how we perceive information i.e., sensemaking and situation awareness. But the essence of thinking is a philosophical issue where philosophers like Arendt previously explained the emergence of banal evil as ordinary men having lost their ability to think. C2 systems that make us reactive to a piece of information, inciting speed to act, minimize human reflection and learning. Developing time effective C2 systems could in fact lead to the creation of military stupidity. Authority, organizational and administrative procedures may lead to normalization of risk, morally questionable attitudes and actions, routinized humiliation and behavior that ultimately break down sensemaking and the sense of “self” in degraded environments. C2 systems and their uses may hamper intelligent action through the loss of an active agency of the individual, thus impede understanding and management of the battlespace, especially in the light of deception and disinformation, and unclear causal relations of events in constrained environments. This paper points at potential good practices in the face of ambiguity.