The context is operational command and control of naval "distributed networked systems to perform tactical missions (Anti-submarine warfare, Anti-Air warfare, Anti-Surface Warfare, Electronic attack/defense, etc.)
All the "way we want to do things" slides show a grunch of unmanned autonomous systems with a plethora of lighning bolts interconnecting them (I see the same sort of diagrams associated with FCS, Sea Dragon, various constellation sof aircraft linked back to the AOC, etc.
When you look at what is being bought, and how we engineer things, and how the culture we have tends to think about things, what we seem unable to get past is a "legacy archetecture" of platforms and C2 nodes in a heirarchical architecture "net-enabled" to a limited extent.
This provides a limited benfit that is difficult to quantify "increased situational awareness" but with all the potential vulnerabilities (to network attack, but also in time expended achiving the assumed beneficial "increased situational awareness" - aside: in nearly a dozen networked experiments and excercises I've yet to see people people spend LESS time dealing with RFIs and SA issues, the more network resources you add - always more, the "just one more look and I might find the vulnerability to destroy the Death Star" syndrome).
Attached is a slide depicting the two extremes - Business practice indicates that its typically not possible to transform an organization from one into another - you stand up new organizations (spin off subsidieries or create organizational structures) to get from one to another. Even in sales force transition in business thee seems to be an "out with the old in with the new" recapitalization, rather than incremental retraining. The desire in teh NAvy appears to be incremental, evolutionary transition from one to another - but is that possible? Desireable?
Are there business examples or examples in the other domains you mention of incremental vice "revolutionary" transitions from heirarchical to "distributed" "operating environmemts"
Edit - the unreadable captions on the two sides are "Hierarchical System architecture - structured information flows and feedback" and the other "Network-centric System architechture - adaptive information flows and ad hoc feedback"
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