Describing joint air defence within operations other than war context as a complex system

Abstract

The objective of Joint Air Defence (JAD) is to defend own assets against all types of hostile aerial attack. This may even happen within the context of Operations Other Than War (OOTW). Like general warfare, OOTW is a complex environment where discrimination between friendly and hostile forces is difficult, resulting in tight timelines. To successfully achieve the objectives of JAD, resilient command and control systems with supporting doctrine are required. Field exercises provide an opportunity for the operator and environment to interact, capturing complex behaviour. Agent Based Modelling can be used to create scenarios by capturing emergent behaviour. This provides a “safe-fail” environment where successes, failures and lessons can be recorded to support doctrine development.