Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.

The fundamental challenge of C2 agility is to increase the rationality of operations. An important vehicle for doing so is by increasing the rationality of assessment, from seeing rationality as a mere matter of “facts” and “objective analysis”, to seeing rationality as a function of human cognition in relation to the structures of the environment. At the heart of C2 lies the problem of dealing with uncertainty, a problem that can to some extent be addressed by making assessments. Assessments however, cannot provide all the answers and expectations on assessment are in many cases unrealistic. The idea of armed conflict as a linear and predictable engineering problem has long been abandoned (if ever accepted at all). Planning and assessment however, are still conducted in a way resembling engineering. Planning is essentially a matter of choosing between alternatives and assessment is often described in terms of “objective analysis” of “facts”. Based on Herbert Simon’s notion of bounded rationality we will in this paper offer an alternative view on rationality and show how a shift of paradigm and an altered approach to uncertainty can in fact increase agility in C2. Assessment for Command and Control (C2) agility: a matter of rationality The fundamental challenge of C2 agility is to increase the rationality of operations. An important vehicle for doing so is by increasing the rationality of assessment, from seeing rationality as a mere matter of “facts” and “objective analysis”, to seeing rationality as a function of human cognition in relation to the structures of the environment. Experimenting with levers, the Greek scientist and philosopher Archimedes reached the conclusion in a famous quote: “Give me a place to stand, I will move the Earth”. In similar vein, we argue that assessment – as a firm basis for action and a solid place from where to move the world – certainly would be needed in today’s operational environment, but cannot be reached in its classical understanding of a correct, unbiased view of the state of things, what actually happens and whether earlier actions have generated any results. But is “just the facts” too much to ask for? Or what else can be done about it? Answering the questions about assessment will firstly have to treat the issue of objectivity of facts and may secondly also address its contexts in the OODA-loop (observe, orient, decide, act) framework for C2. In times where C2 has to become agile, the very notion of objective assessment as well as the very notion of one, centralized OODA-loop may need revision to bring visions aligned with research on cognitive capacities and limitations. A fundamental consequence might be an adjustment of the very notion of rationality in C2 decision making, from seeing it as optimization based on objective facts, to instead seeing the very act of adaptation as an expression of rationality, in every part of C2 processes including assessment. In the history of C2, while decisions have become the focus of discussion, assessment developed to become the perhaps most prominent aspect of the cycle, not least through the modern emphasis on high-tech warfare, lending observational powers promising a transparency of the theatre that has never been seen before. Indeed, information superiority was a key concept to modern warfare. Victories were won through the deployment of increasingly cheap sensors able to recognize any sensation, be it visual, acoustic or temperature, etc. By information fusion the detail of overview had never been achieved before. In his classic work, van Creveld (1985) described this information-