A Heuristic Decision Making Model to Mitigate Adverse Consequences in a Network-Centric Warfare / Sense and Respond System

The general premise of this research is that decision making will increase in importance based on the transformation of the military towards Network Centric Warfare (NCW) / Sense and Respond logistical, informational, command / control systems. Additionally, this may result in an increase of adverse consequences, potentially resulting in an increase of accidents, major mishaps or, in general, system interruptions. Being able to quickly identify and mitigate adverse consequences in decision making will be more valuable and needed for managers and leaders in the near future. In the Legacy / cold war military, the need for information and decision making was mitigated by the large excess capacities, inventories, and redundant sub-systems and personnel or resources in general. Potentially in a NCW / Sense and Respond military there is a greater need for information and for decision makers to act or use the information, resulting in an increase in decision-making requirements. These may not increase in frequencies but rather increase in importance and impact, as available resources are lessened and the information flow and amount increases, putting further demands on the decision makers. Also if the need to make decisions increases and, additionally, adverse consequences increase, the impact will be larger on the system with more implications, accidents, and system interruptions. It may be possible to mitigate or avoid the potentially negative impact of system interruptions and adverse consequences that stem from decision making in a NCW / Sense and Respond system. A model is suggested for considering decision consequences.