Command & Control in the multi-domain era

By Manfred Hader, Antoine Kimmel, Florian Aknin and Darot Dy

Command and Control (C2) is undergoing its most significant transformation since armed forces first digitized the battlespace. The return of high-intensity, multi-domain conflict has exposed the structural limits of legacy C2 architectures—centralized, synchronous, and fixed at the point of delivery. For European defense leaders and industrial stakeholders, the question is no longer whether C2 must change, but how fast, and in what direction. Our latest study examines the forces reshaping military decision-support systems and outlines the strategic choices that will define European defense capability for the decade ahead.

The limits of legacy C2 in high-intensity conflict

For decades, Western armed forces built their C2 systems around a single operational promise: a shared picture flowing top-down through dedicated networks, processed through deterministic workflows, and delivered to commanders in near real time. That model performed adequately in permissive environments and asymmetric conflicts. It is no longer adequate in a peer-adversary context. Battlespaces saturated with thousands of assets—autonomous systems, sensors, infantry, orbital platforms—generate volumes of data that overwhelm traditional processing logic. Adversaries now innovate on cycles measured in days, not years. A C2 architecture whose logic is fixed at delivery cannot address tactics that evolve week to week.

Three structural shifts are redefining what C2 must be. First, network agnosticism: future C2 systems must operate across whatever communication bearer is available, rather than relying on dedicated, siloed networks. Second, asynchronism: in many operational contexts, commanders must accept that a real-time shared tactical picture is neither achievable nor necessary—synchronous C2 is increasingly reserved for the most time-critical mission sets. Third, non-determinism: C2 systems must evolve alongside their users, enabling operators in the field to reconfigure AI agents in near real time to match changing tactical situations. Together, these shifts point to the same conclusion: Europe's future C2 cannot be a single system. It must be a system of systems.

Many armed forces, many doctrines—one architecture challenge

Europe is not a single defense actor. It comprises approximately 30 armed forces, each with its own doctrine, command culture, industrial base, and procurement logic. Alliances and shared command structures, including NATO, push toward common concepts—but the underlying doctrinal diversity remains significant and directly shapes what each armed force requires from a digital C2 architecture. Architectures must accommodate divergent national stacks. Coalition interoperability must be achieved without forcing doctrinal convergence. Data must remain sovereign at the national level while remaining shareable at the coalition level. These are not technical problems with purely technical solutions—they are governance and design challenges that require coordinated responses across states, alliances, and industry.

The current state of C2 modernization across major European nations illustrates both the progress made and the distance still to be covered. National programs are underway, and the strategic direction is broadly aligned. But common barriers persist: slow procurement cycles , legacy system integration complexity, and the structural limits of prime-contractor-led delivery models. None of the leading European nations has yet achieved fully integrated, software-defined, multi-domain C2. How each country navigates these constraints—and whether a coherent European approach emerges—is one of the central questions this study examines in detail.

Toward a federated and AI-augmented C2 ecosystem

The European answer to these constraints will not be a centralized, single-stack model. It will be federated, modular, and coalition-driven: a layered ecosystem in which purpose-built C2 functions operate at the tactical level, national domain nodes aggregate and filter at the operational level, and coalition-facing interfaces connect national architectures to NATO and partner nations through open interoperability standards—designed to absorb battlespace saturation and withstand degraded connectivity.
Within this ecosystem, multiple categories of industrial actors each play a distinct role. New defense players are best positioned to address fast-moving capability gaps at the tactical level, where software development speed matters most. Established national primes are better suited to deliver higher-level domain applications and the integration architecture that allows heterogeneous systems to exchange data securely. The C2 market is not a winner-takes-all space—but it requires clearly defined roles and open interfaces to function as a coherent ecosystem.

Realizing this vision means overcoming seven structural challenges our study maps in depth: industrial delivery speed, data and ontology sovereignty, coalition interoperability, talent and skills, sovereign supply chain security, cybersecurity and resilience, and the ethics of autonomous decision-making. The study also presents a proposed AI governance framework that reconciles the core tensions between sovereignty and agility, control and autonomy, and certification and operational speed. The decisions made now on procurement structures, interoperability standards, and AI governance will determine the operational effectiveness of European armed forces for the decade ahead.

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