David S. Alberts

David Stephen Alberts (born 1942) is a former American Director of Research for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (OASD) for Networks and Information Integration (NII).[1]

Biography

David S. Alberts did his undergraduate work was at City College of New York where he received a BA in Statistics in 1964. He received a Masters (1966) and a Doctorate in Operations Research (1968) from the University of Pennsylvania.[2]

Alberts' academic career has included serving as first Director of the Computer Science Program at NYU and has held professional rank posts at NYU Graduate School of Business, CUNY, and most recently as a Research Professor at George Mason University.[2]

He was the Director, Advanced Concepts, Technologies, and Information Strategies (ACTIS), Deputy Director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies, and the executive agent for DoD's Command and Control Research Program. This included responsibility for the Center for Advanced Concepts and Technology (ACT) and the School of Information Warfare and Strategy (SIWS) at the National Defense University.

Dr. Alberts has chaired numerous international and national conferences and symposia and has authored or co-authored many publications, some of which are included in tutorials given by the IEEE and other professional societies. He has served as an officer in a number of professional societies and has actively contributed to AIAA, MORS, TIMS, AFCEA, and ORSA. At the local level, Alberts has served as Assistant to the Commissioner, NYPD.

Recent honors have included the Secretary of Defense's Outstanding Public Service Award, Aviation Week and Space Technology's Government/Military Laurel, and the inaugural Network Centric Warfare Award for Best Contribution to the Theory of NCW presented by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement (IDGA).[3]

He is currently the President of the International Command and Control Institute (IC2I), a non-profit dedicated to ensuring that the body of literature created and inspired by the DoD Command and Control Research Program (DoD CCRP), which is no longer funded by DoD, remains accessible to researchers. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a Federal funded Research and Development Center. His current research focuses on the relationships and inter-dependencies between and among approaches to C2 and Governance, composite network characteristics and performance, automation and autonomy, and cyber.

Work

NEC C2 Maturity Model under development by SAS-065

He is widely considered to have created a number of seminal works related to command and control theory and is credited with introducing the idea that command and control concepts need to be extended to civil-military coalitions and collectives whether or not they possess a single unified chain of command. His books have been translated into many languages and are used in military schools and academia in many countries.

In his book entitled The Agility Advantage,[4] he proposes "agility" as the measure of choice for organizations, collections of organizations, processes, systems, and individuals engaged in complex endeavors (e.g. civil-military, cyber-security, economic development). A NATO research group, chaired by Dr. Alberts was formed to explore the ideas put forth in The Agility Advantage. In 2013, this group (SAS-085) completed its final report [5] which received the 2014 NATO Scientific Achievement Award. In Re-envisioning C2: The Future of the Enterprise (2014), a collaboration with co-authors Marius S.Vassiliou and John R. Agre [6] identifies and discusses four interrelated megatrends that are shaping the current practice of C2 and the challenges enterprises are and will continue to face in the 21st century. This book includes an analysis of historical examples and experimental evidence to identify the ways that C2 can go wrong. It presents a set of conclusions regarding the ways to get C2 right.

He co-authored an article with Mark E. Nissen, which was published in the International C2 Journal, entitled Toward Harmonizing Command and Control with Organization and Management Theory.[7] Another recent article Agility, Focus and Convergence: The Future of Command and Control challenges not only long-held command and control beliefs but the very language of command and control itself.[8]

In early 2010, he developed a comprehensive educational campaign to remedy the lack of awareness and understanding of the nature of 21st century missions, Networked Enabled Capability (NEC), and the implications for Command and Control (C2) and intelligence. The overall objective is to develop the widespread awareness and in-depth understanding necessary to accelerate a “network-centric” transformation of existing C2I organizations, processes, and systems to make them more effective and efficient. This campaign involves the development of curricula, courses, educational materials, and experimental environments that provide students with “hands-on” opportunities to experience a variety of network-enabled capabilities and network-enabled C2 (NEC2) under different mission-related scenarios and circumstances is the first such offering. The C2-related educational materials he created, the Network Enabled Command and Control (NEC2) Short Course,consists of 8 course modules. Each can be accessed and downloaded from the CCRP website (NEC2 Short Modules).

Leadership of NATO Research Groups

Alberts has chaired a number of NATO research groups, the latest of which (NATO-TR-SAS-085) [9] completed (in 2013) a three-year effort to valid C2 Agility Theory. This group received the prestigious 2014 NATO Scientific Achievement Award. The group's findings have important implications for the future of military organizations and the operations they undertake. Their final report is posted on the DoD CCRP website.[10] Previous NATO groups he has chaired have produced a series of seminal C2-related works, including: the NATO NEC C2 Maturity Model[11] the NATO Code of Best Practice for C2 Assessment,][12] and the NATO Code of Best Practice: Experimentation.[13]

Publications

Alberts is credited with helping to provide the intellectual foundation for an Information Age transformation of military institutions.[14][15] His works include:

In 1999,Command Arrangements for Peace Operations and Complexity, Global Politics, and National Security were suggested for The Airpower Professional’s Book Club Top Ten List.[16]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to David S. Alberts (operations researcher).

References

  1. ↑ Informing the Transformation
  2. 1 2 George Mason University: Administration and Faculty.
  3. ↑ http://ncwevent.com/ektronpage.aspx?id=295752#2004 This was the first year that IDGA gave out these awards so it is particularly significant.
  4. ↑ http://dodccrp.org/files/agility_advantage/Agility_Advantage_Book.pdf (2011)
  5. ↑ http://dodccrp.org/html4/sas-085.html
  6. ↑ http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595804 Re-envisioning C2: The Future of the Enterprise
  7. ↑ The International C2 Journal, Volume 3, Number 2, 2009 Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)
  8. ↑ Alberts, David S. Agility, Focus, and Convergence: The Future of Command and Control.The International C2 Journal, Volume 1, Number 1, 2007
  9. ↑ SAS Panel Activities
  10. ↑
  11. ↑ NATO NEC C2 Maturity Model.,
  12. ↑ NATO SAS-026,039.NATO Code of Best Practice for C2 Assessment. CCRP Publication Series, 2002. Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)
  13. ↑ Alberts, David S., R. E. Hayes, J. Kirzl, D. Maxwell, and D. Leedom. Code of Best Practice: Experimentation.CCRP Publication Series, 2002. Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)
  14. ↑ Alexander Kott, Battle of Cognition: The future information-rich warfare and the mind of the commander, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, ISBN 0313349959, p. 67: "Network-centric warfare became a popular concept within the US Department of Defense. The Office of Force Transformation became the official home of the concept, and Admiral Cebrowski, John Garstka, and Dr. David Alberts issued a steady stream of influential publications."
  15. ↑ Paul T. Mitchell, Network Centric Warfare and Coalition Operations: The new military operating system, Routledge, 2009, ISBN 0203881168, p. 34: "Network Centric Warfare, ... Understanding Information Age Warfare, ... and Power to the Edge ... these three works form the canon from which most thinking on NCW has developed."
  16. ↑ Maj M. J. Petersen, USAF Editor. The Mystique of Airpower. Airpower Journal, Summer 1999.
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