As anyone interested in military research has probably noticed: as technology advances, there appears to be a - directly stated - trend towards decentralization. For example: DARPA is coming out with something revolutionary called the ACK. It stands for Adapting Cross-Domain Kill-Webs. It seeks to offer mission commanders far more options across multiple vectors such that they can more flexibly, reactively, and effectively carry out adaptive kill-chains and manage assets within and without their domain. This seems to me to mean they are trying to introduce the kind of flexibility that can only be achieved with more open mission parameters and decentralized command structures, while maintaining support for strategy at a higher, inter-domain level. Or so I think. They call the web of options provided by the ACK “kill-webs”.

The ACK would probably be the most important tactical advantage I can think of apart from direct knowledge of what one’s enemies are going to do. I mean, we can talk about producing massive amounts of soldiers quickly via Targeted-Neuroplasticity-Training or something, but the ACK would make warfare more like a precise game of strategy - unless I’m misunderstanding it - and that would be a game-changer.

This ties into the idea that one should focus, at least some of the time, on accomplishing objectives and also doing the immediately advantageous thing. If you have a kill-web, you are more likely to be able to accomplish objectives in such a way that you satisfy both completing an immediately advantageous thing and something that is part of a larger strategy, as you have significantly more options at your fingertips. Needless to say, if you can also accomplish two mission objectives at the same time that is also ideal.

If maximizing the intersection of these things doesn’t sound important, think about this: if you spend three hours baking a large cake and it is enough to feed twenty people, then you have accomplished proportionately much more than if you bake a smaller cake that might take the same amount of time but only feeds five people. The advantage, in terms of people fed, yielded by baking the bigger cake, which in this case would be found by subtracting the amount fed by the small cake from the large cake, is positive (obviously), so we know that we accomplished more in the same amount of time even though only one cake would be baked in either scenario. We need only know beforehand that the bigger cake will provide even a small advantage, in terms of people fed, to justify baking it.

If we want to account for the increase in resources needed to bake the larger cake, in case we want to be efficient, then we merely need to compare the ratio of people fed by the large cake over the size of the large cake to the ratio of people fed by the small cake over the size of the small cake. If the first ratio is greater than the second, then we know that baking the large cake was both efficient and, as already determined, offered an advantage.

I think this specific example could be reduced to some equations, but that would not be useful. The math is just to demonstrate the concepts.

There are myriad aspects to balancing the immediately advantageous and more strategic goals that are not as simple as I make them sound, and that is very much open-ended. As far as rapidly producing choices for a mission commander goes, DARPA seems to think computer science holds the keys to that part of the technology.

All of this might sound difficult to do in the heat of combat. I would actually say that it is impossible. At least without the ACK. With the ACK one could get closer to reducing warfare to a set of mental calculations not totally unlike those involved in chess or other strategy games for individual mission commanders. And disaggregated forces actually become more effective as the ability to strategize increases with a diversity of options in a kill-web. The ACK is, no doubt, going to change warfare fundamentally and is a perfect example of the shift to decentralization that likely will not end any time soon.

If anyone thinks I'm wrong or should leave this kind of analysis to actual military people, please say so. I just find this topic interesting and have no background in tactics or anything.