History
In 1995, the Command and Control Research Program (CCRP), within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, held the first International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium (ICCRTS) at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. This meeting built upon a series of events established during the 1970s by the Office of Naval Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that brought together interested researchers to exchange ideas on command and control (C2), its measurement and assessment, and the impact of new technologies on the C2 process.
The initial meeting was modest in size (63 participants) and included only a handful of non-U.S. participants. Subsequent meetings have been held on a bi-annual basis in the United Kingdom (1996, 2006), Sweden (1998), Australia (2000), Canada (2002), and Denmark (2004). Meetings in other years have been held in the United States. Participation has grown substantially, to include hundreds of participants from dozens of nations. Equally important, the ICCRTS has developed into the meeting where the best C2 analysts from around the world exchange ideas about the state-of-the-art and seek to influence the state-of-the-practice within the United States, its coalition partners, and the missions they undertake. The Symposium is a meeting place for professional researchers, academics, active duty and reserve officers, and policy makers.
The ICCRTS has consistently focused on leading-edge issues involving (a) new concepts in C2 (b) new technologies and their potential impact on C2, and (c) feedback and evidence from experiments, exercises, and real-world operations. The Symposium is also an important forum for discussion of coalition and collective C2 issues and for examining the complex endeavors (stabilization, operations, disaster relief) involving a variety of entities including military, civilian, government, international organizations, PVOs and NGOs.
