Bayesian decision making and military command and control

We discuss firstly the problem of military decision, in the context of the more general development of ideas in the representation of decision making. Within this context, we have considered a mathematical model – Bayesian Decision – of decision making and military command. Previous work has been extended, and applied to this problem. A distribution of belief in outcome, given that a decision is made, and a Loss function – a measure of the effect of this outcome relative to a goal – are formed. The Bayes' Decision is the decision which globally minimises the resultant bimodal (or worse) Expected Loss function. The set of all minimising decisions corresponds to the surface of an elementary Catastrophe. This allows smooth parameter changes to lead to a discontinuous change in the Bayes' decision. In future work this approach will be used to help develop a number of hypotheses concerning command processes and military headquarters structure. It will also be used to help capture such command and control processes in simulation modelling of future defence capability and force structure.