Capabilities of intelligent units

The development of information and communication technology, platforms, sensors and weapon systems enable much faster combat pace with cooperating units in the perspective 2030-2035. These units may be manned or unmanned and physical platforms or advanced software functions, which can be flexibly combined to cooperatively achieve mission objectives. To handle faster combat pace and more extensive dependencies, the units need to be intelligent with an ability to adapt their behaviour to the situation. Since future combat will be performed with an increasing number of different types of intelligent and cooperating units, the complexity of combat increases for the command and control system. The project Command and Control of Joint Autonomous Intelligent Units is therefore performed to study how the command and control system should manage and integrate the complexity of intelligent units. The purpose of this report is to describe examples of abilities for intelligent units and their effect on future command and control. The report shows that intelligent units increase the military effect in terms of better situation awareness, endurance, robustness, redundancy, efficiency, and flexibility. Other effects are lower risk for military personnel, better possibility of covert operation, higher risk taking, more agile responses, and increased effect with more resources. The majority of abilities are used on the tactical and combat level. These units need a high analytic ability since combat units only have limited resources for command and control. Command control on the strategic and operational level mostly concern distribution of resources for cooperative systems of manned and unmanned units. Some examples of issues that future studies will address are: What limitations and possibilities are there with cooperative systems of intelligent units? What decision rights should intelligent units have in reconnaissance and employment of weapons? How does intelligent units affect military strategy and doctrine?