62. Sooner Than We Think: Command Post Survivability and Future Threats with COL (Ret.) John Antal

COL John Antal (USA, Ret.) is a lifelong student of leadership and the art of war. His purpose in life is “to develop leaders and inspire service.” Today, he is an Amazon best-selling author, a defense analyst, a military correspondent, and a galvanic speaker. John has appeared on radio, podcast, and television shows and is the author of 16 books and hundreds of magazine articles on military and leadership subjects. His latest books are Leadership Rising (July 2021); and 7 Seconds to Die, A Military Analysis of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the Future of Warfighting (February 2022). In the past year, based on his in-depth study of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, COL Antal has made over 108 presentations on the “changing methods of warfare” to U.S. military and national security leaders. He offers these presentations to the U.S. military at no charge and as a “Soldier for Life.” His previous The Convergence podcast — Top Attack: Lessons Learned from the 2nd Nagorno-Karabakh War — and its associated blog post remain Army Mad Scientist’s “best-selling” listens and reads to date!

In today’s podcast, COL Antal returns to discuss the challenges facing our Army in executing continuous and uninterrupted mission command in the contemporary battlespace, ensuring command post survivability, and achieving the Joint Force’s requirement for an All Domain Common Operational Picture. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

• Modern conflict is increasingly transparent; it is impossible to hide on the battlefield. Consequently, it is imperative that the Army adopt and practice “masking” — a full spectrum, multi-domain effort to deceive enemy sensors and disrupt targeting. Our Joint Force must obscure its optical, thermal, electronic, acoustic, and quantum signatures — or die!

• Today’s centralized command posts are incredibly vulnerable to enemy fire, while “Command Posts-in-Sanctuary” — those out of reach of adversary strikes — are limited by communications capabilities. To find an appropriate middle ground, we should adopt decentralized, mobile command posts that can support command and control and mask their locations and communications.

• It is unlikely that the United States will initiate the first strike in a conflict. Therefore, the U.S. military must consider how it will respond to a first strike by our adversaries. We should ask what we could do to prepare for a