After having read John Robb's book "Brave New War" it becomes instantly apparent that he's a systems guy. Looking for the key stone in any system whether it be economic, technical, or command will allow for a collapse of that system. His examples in the book are readily apparent as real world examples of system collapse.

When looking at power, water, food, or government for effectiveness in war de-centralization of decision making capacity and generation of ideas (food, water, power) are imperative. This distributed system is incredibly effective in keeping telephone and computing systems functional no matter the level of the disaster. The Internet is a distributed communications system. The ideas of distributed networks are not new and fairly well analyzed.

Into this fray I find this in my in-box today.

“Command and control” is one of the key operational functions as described in Air Force Doctrine Document 1, Air Force Basic Doctrine. It is the key operational function that ties all the others together to achieve our military objectives. Our doctrine for command and control rests on the Air Force tenets of centralized control and decentralized execution. A commander of Air Force forces will be designated whenever Air Force forces are presented to a joint force commander. This designation provides unity of command.

....

"Command and control of air and space power is an Air Force-provided
asymmetric capability that no other Service or nation provides,"
according to a new U.S. Air Force publication on the subject. See
"Command and Control," Air Force Doctrine Document 2-8, June 1, 2007:

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/usaf/afdd2-8.pdf
Centralized control and decentralized execution are not distributed nor are they an asymmetric advantage or capability. Reading through the document I'm flabbergasted by the total lack of understanding of distributed systems knowledge.

From the document it suggests that all air and space assets will require the commander of those assets to be contacted prior to their utilization or change in mission status. In other words on first blush what is discussed as de-centralized execution is actually reinforcement of silos of command and control.

Interesting reading having just finished Robb's book.