Military Command In Multi-Domain Environment

Abstract The practice of military command roots in the past. There were always trends to follow the footsteps of the great captains of earlier eras such as Alexander the Great, Caius Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte. With the birth of the modern scientific method historians and theorists tried to identify the essence of good leadership and the personal requirements of being a good leader. In the 18th century the notion of coup d’oeil and of the military genius were considered the key to success on the battlefield. The military education traditionally focused on the development of leadership skills, but the skills and practices being taught were drawn from experiences of previous military engagements and exercises. In periods of peace command experience stagnates or even deteriorates due to lack of combat experience, meaning that the command practices lose their touch with the realities of the present. This article argues that the growing complexity of the operational environment requires the alteration of the existing command practices and military education agenda to create leaders capable of achieving the desired successes in future wars. In our view a highly digitalized multi-domain command post requires a certain kind of leaders that beside tactical and operational proficiency must have a skill to efficiently apply the available high-tech assets, the digital coup d’oeil.