In the midst of fighting a global War on Terror, the U.S. Army is concurrently attempting to
transform to a more agile and deployable organization, which is centered largely on the
integration of new information technologies into its command posts. While most Army leaders
are reporting that many of these new information “tools” such as the Army Battle Command
System (ABCS) give them an unprecedented level of situational awareness and are beginning to
enable a new style of war labeled by some as Network Centric Warfare, other leaders are
reporting that the integration of this new digital technology comes with some unintended
consequences that in some cases actually slows and decreases the quality of information flow by
orders of magnitude. We studied the “Brigade Unit of Action” concept with specific emphasis
on the Brigade’s ability to disseminate and process information within and between command
posts, using System Dynamics as a modeling tool to help better understand the impact of various
policy decisions made by the U.S. Army. Our study concentrated on some of the possible
strengths and pitfalls of NCW theory, and led to the formulation of five heuristics that Army
leaders should consider when developing the future command and control architecture for the
Brigade Unit of Action
