Friday, April 5, 2013

Dear God, what more can the U.S. military ask from the poor letter C?

Posted by John Keller

THE MIL & AERO BLOG, 5 April 2013. Command. Control. Communications. Computers. For most, that's already a lot to ask all at once from the poor letter C, but not, evidently for the U.S. military.

Military acronyms and initialisms, as many of us know, can approach the absurd, but now the Pentagon has gone completely over the top with its latest term: C5ISR. This quaint term refers to command, control, communications, computers, combat systems, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

It's a mouthful that refers generally to commanding warfighters, watching stuff, and telling others all about it.

I can remember when the military would only string three Cs together in a now-archaic term called C3I (pronounced "Cee-Cubed-Eye"). That term, which looks simple today, referred to command, control, communications, and intelligence. Interestingly, this term also described commanding troops, watching stuff, and telling others all about it.

The term C3I emerged from the Pentagon and entered general use back in the mid-1980s around the time when the SINCGARS radio, the OTH-B radar, and MILSTAR satellite were new. It was still the Cold War, and the term C3I referred to U.S. military interests to turn the command chain inside of what the Soviet Union could do at the time.

C3I became such a popular term that it gave rise to separate publications and magazine departments. I know. I used to produce a B-to-B newsletter called C3I Report back in the day.

But the era of C3I was short-lived, because for the Pentagon it just didn't have enough ... uuummmpf.

So what to do? Enter the term C4I. This added a C to create a short name for command, control, communications, COMPUTERS, and intelligence. Had to get the high-tech stuff in there to make it sound cool and futuristic.

Nevertheless, the term C4I didn't last long, either. It just needed ... more. So the military came up with the term C4ISR to describe command, control, communications, computers, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

Although C4ISR still basically refers to commanding warfighters, watching stuff, and telling others all about it, that term was so nifty that it lasted in general use for perhaps more than a decade. It also emerged at a time when terminology upgrades and cachet-insertion were coming into vogue for military technology.

Unfortunately, however, even the term C4ISR has become inadequate for today's fighting forces. Now we have C5ISR to refer to command, control, communications, computers, COMBAT SYSTEMS, surveillance and reconnaissance.

I first saw reference to C5ISR earlier this week in a Navy SPAWAR contract announcement for ... well, I'll let you see exactly what the Navy is contracting for:

"The contracts are for the procurement of Decision Superiority support services including the entire spectrum of non-inherently governmental services and solutions (equipment and services) associated with the full system lifecycle support including research, development, test, evaluation, production and fielding of sustainable, secure, survivable, and interoperable command, control, communication, computers, combat systems, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (C5ISR), information operations, enterprise information services and space capabilities," according to the Pentagon's daily blue tops announcement.

Sounds kind of networky and computery to me, but in all honesty I have no idea what that contract is about, except that it involves 16 companies, $180 million -- a big chunk of change in the post-sequestration era -- and that grand new C5ISR term.

C5ISR, by the way, generally describes ... you guessed it ... commanding troops, watching stuff, and telling others all about it. I can't wait to see the next term the Pentagon comes up with to describe these activities.

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