The Data Logistics Challenge for the Modern Armoured Brigade

by Maj Andrew Bilton

This critical assessment should be read in conjunction with Colonel Pete Brunton’s Reflections on Project ASGARD Digital Networks; The Good, the bad and the Ugly. It provides valuable context and insight into current capability development and acquisition [Editor]

Abstract. 

Modern military effectiveness increasingly depends on the ability to move and manage data across the battlespace. This article examines the Communications and Information Systems (CIS) challenges facing contemporary Armoured Brigade (Armd Bde) Command Posts, focusing on the Bowman system as the principal in-service capability examining data logistics as the pivotal enabler, or constraint, on freedom of action. 

Freedom of action - defined as the ability to act and adapt faster than an adversary - relies on resilient, high-capacity CIS to synchronise effects through Combined Arms Manoeuvre (CAM). Adversary advances in Electronic Warfare (EW), coupled with the data throughput limitations of legacy systems, increasingly threaten this freedom. Emerging technologies demonstrate the potential to close the gap, offering higher data rates, improved resilience, and reduced electromagnetic visibility.

This article highlights that even advanced decision-support tools depend fundamentally on robust data logistics. The analysis concludes that the decisive factor in future land operations will be the ability to transport data securely, rapidly, and under adversarial pressure, an essential enabler of tactical agility and operational coherence. Data logistics must be treated not as a support function, but as a decisive operational capability in its own right.

Link to full article.