The recent evolution of Command and Control (C2) in Irregular Warfare has seriously challenged warfighter performance readiness by directly affecting how decisions are allocated, how information is distributed, and how the execution of common C2 processes are carried out. Ineffective C2 can jeopardize the overall mission and potentially lead to dire, if not fatal consequences. In recent years, great emphasis in research and development has been placed on increasing warfighter readiness, but developing the needed C2 assessment tools to understand performance improvements are costly and time consuming. To address this problem, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) research and technology working group has completed a repository of C2 assessment tools. As a taxonomy of human performance measurement in the C2 domain, it incorporates measures, instruments, methods, and tools used by NATO and across U.S. military branches.
In this paper we first describe the C2 Repository development and distribution. Sharing information across military branches and nations has been crucial for promoting C2 readiness. This information has potential to result in 1) standardization and consistency of C2 assessment, 2) reduced duplication of effort, 3) a definition and established baseline of the current state of C2 assessment, and 4) an identification of limitations and measurement gaps. Secondly, we discuss implications for deploying the C2 Repository into the NATO military environment. In order for the database to adapt to changing C2 environments, options for continuously updating the Repository are explored. One such option is the Navy's Human Performance Analysis Tool (HPAT). Other enhancements include 1) sharing measures across the Services within the U.S. (e.g., Joint Knowledge Online [JKO]), 2) developing a systematic method to evaluate current assessment tools, and 3) identifying opportunities for validating current measures included in the database.