Communicating Commander's Intent in a Chain of Command With Multi‐Criteria Decision Analysis—An Experiment in Air Combat

ABSTRACT Decision making in a chain of command with a rapid time frame is typical in military and emergency contexts, and yet the topic has received almost no attention in the MCDA literature. The commander's intent regarding the implementation of an operation is expressed at the top level of the command chain. Before the intent is put into practice, it must be passed through different levels of the chain. Typically, the intention statement does not provide exact guidance on how the operation should be planned and executed on the lower levels. As a result, behavioural effects and biases can distort the interpretations of the intent at the lower levels. The contribution of this paper is an approach for using MCDA to support communication, planning and decision making in the chain of command. In this approach, criteria weights of an MCDA model are determined on the highest level by the commander. Then, the commander's intent is communicated so that the message from the top level also contains these weights, and the MCDA model is utilised on the lower levels. The approach was evaluated in an air force test case. Two air force commanders expressed their intents and corresponding criteria weights for two defensive counter air operations. The criteria were related to the survival of own aircraft, the destruction of enemy aircraft and the expenditure of missiles. The commanders used five weighting methods, that is, SMARTER, Direct, Swing, SMART and AHP. They preferred the Direct and Swing methods. Air force staff officers planned the air operations by following the standard and MCDA‐supported planning procedures. The simulation of these operations revealed that the MCDA‐supported ones were in better compliance with the commanders' original intent statements. Thus, the MCDA approach appeared to support the integrity of the command chain as the intent was conveyed through it.