Command and Control: Challenging Fallacies of the ‘Military Model’ in Research and Practice

Abstract

Disaster researchers advocate for a flexible problem-solving approach emphasizing creativity, initiative, and improvisation in disaster response. Researchers decry the rigid approach widely referred as the “military model,” or command and control. Yet practitioners often support this “command post” approach to response. Researchers and practitioners, however, fail to recognize that the model they either reject or support, respectively, is an inaccurate representation of actual military command and control in both doctrine and practice. This article compares military and disaster literature command and control archetypes and presents them as remarkably similar. In so doing, it challenges existing command and control paradigms and argues that the research view is quite similar to the true military approach. The central aim of this paper seeks to dismiss inaccurate assumptions of the command and control model while persuading critics to adopt a new and more informed assessment of the military model in its modern form.