C2 - the long view (with Michael Holm)

Welcome to Commander Control, a podcast series about military, command and the control measures used to orchestrate compact engagements and wars. In this episode, we're talking about C2 since 1995, a view over 40 years of Commander Control, but from the perspective of industry, specifically from the Chairman of Systematic, Michael Holm. The show is sponsored by Systematic. Systematics, world-leading Commander Control Software, the SituS suite, is in use in 16 NATO countries and more than 50 militaries worldwide. Its open architecture allows complete integration with legacy systems, while meeting all NATO interoperability standards, and its intuitive interface bridges language and domain barriers across alliances. It's hard to recall what C2 looked like in 1985, just three years after the US Marine Corps introduced the control element to the taxonomy of command. 40 years ago now, C2 Assure felt like a map encompassed some lines on a sandbox, hastily drawn onto local maps by supportant commanders, and some occasional bits of guidance from the higher ups. Radio comms didn't really extend to the unit level, certainly not to individuals. Combined arms coordination was consulted in procedural ways. States fielded and fought in large national formation-sized units, certainly not below divisional strength, and it was those formations that coordinated between each other across nationalities at the highest level. At C, ships spoke to each other on HF or UHF radios, sometimes even encoded with cryptographic tools. Procedural deconflection was a default setting, and some non-real-time data exchange was starting to take place. The same was true in the air, little real data exchange took place. The battle was fought with raw radar switching between feeds where possible to gain the most accurate picture. Command, across all of these domains, was conducted and executed at the edge, direction, guidance and coordination happened at some distance. And politicians, even, tended to understand this methodology too, most of whom had been part of the greatest generation that fought themselves between 1939 and 1945. All of this was working under a cloak of electronic warfare that would ensure no one could talk to anyone else, even if they were almost on top of each other. Raw radar feeds were confused by complex plans for deception, degradation and the destruction of feeds. So quite different from today's expectations for perfect situational awareness, real-time chat, dynamic battle-spanaged management, and presumption of certainty by commanders at almost every level, certainty of intelligence, of connectivity, of plans, of superiority, perhaps certainty of outcomes, even. So what happened between 1985 and today? Who led development? What drove the demands for digitalisation? What part was played by military doctrine and how much was the responsibility of technology? I've been really interested in these changes over the past couple of years since we started recording the show, but it's finding someone to talk to about it has been difficult. A scholar would have provided and has provided a view of C2 through their own lens, and let's face it, they prefer to talk about command rather than C2 as a system. And military officers have a professional interest in C2, but tend only to stay at one level for a few years before moving on. So they tend to see C2 as a tool during their careers and few actually shape it. Neither do they stay at one level long enough to form a coherent view over how it's evolved over such a time span. But then there came across Michael Holm, the founder of Systematic and Now Chairman of that company. Michael's story is fascinating in and of itself, starting the company and growing it over 40 years to become one of less than half a dozen companies around the world dedicated to C2 alone, and who have remained in the business for the long term. Systematic now provides more than 50 countries around the world with the most flexible, reliable and interrupulous C2 tools available on the market, so that NATO has started using Systematic's sitware tool as standard. Over dinner in Arhus in Denmark, I persuaded Michael to allow me to have a conversation with him covering his recollections of 40 years of C2 development and evolution. We sat down in his very smart, very practical, very Danish company headquarters in early October 2025 to have a chat. I tried to cover our conversation with two specific outcomes in my mind. Firstly, I wanted to hear his view on C2 over 40 years. Secondly, I was interested in understanding how a company like his solely focused on C2 had survived, thrived even in a military domain that was historically very segmented, very commercially stove piped, and considered to be a sovereign problem, rather than one that related to multinationality. Of course, those conversations were intertwined and Michael provided a view from industry. It's a perspective that comes with a distance from C2 doctrine biases and heuristics that I found very interesting and helpful. I started by asking Michael how he got involved in C2. He wasn't a conscript after all. He was a computer engineer. I got involved in the command control environment system and the world of command control back in 1981. When the Danish Navy bought that first computer-based civilian system. It was called Flake of Sedenmark command control information system, the FODCCS Flake of Sedenmark. They bought that from Thompson, CSF, that time, Nautilus in France, and I was part of the offset package that time. So I was one of four engineers. I was stationed in France helping building the system. We have no knowledge about building such a system in Denmark. I went to Thompson. Let's call the tiles from now. Back in the 80s and worked in a big command control factory basically in the Relici, in South of Paris, as a engineer for three or four years. What I saw and what I learned is that the built-up bespoke system every customer of their requirements. It was very siloed. We are Navy, we talk Navy, and we have this requirement because at that time back in the 80s, Denmark was the most eastern part of the nation. Before the Baltics came in, so Bornholm, the little island we have in the most southern part, was the closest point we have to Russia at that time. So all the streets and the seas between all the ships have to go through the narrow water between Denmark and Sweden, and inside the Danish territory. That was where we had to have all the raiders persistent and track what was happening at that time. But it was very siloed and everything was built from scratch. I remember the only thing I really felt at that time, to have their own operating system, have their own program language. That was the real time language. It was called LTR Laugatang Raielle version 2, and it was the first time I saw object-oriented program, what is now modern. That was built by Tals at that time, they were really clever. We built our own database system, we built our own communication protocol, X25 from the scratch up, and everything was just a raw computer, smaller than the iPhone today. And everything was hand-built for that system here. And I knew the next door was another program for another customer, they did the same thing. There were three or four programs doing the same thing. There was no way we could share and not share information because it was like Denmark is Denmark, let countries, that country, another country, third country, third country. No incentive for any way we should share stuff. We did their own stuff. Thorne Lilleburt was a little bit crazy, but I learned at least that that was how it was at that time. So we built a system, and in the high point was specific for the things customer. And the whole system was a Navy system with a single line in from other services, mainly nature links at that time here. Denmark released, there was no IT or command control in the Army. The main tap was aircraft, but it was like a little bit pre-F-16, so they had little thing, but not a big thing to have air surveillance and air defense system, and also a very silo to a very special spoke. And at the ends Navy had system laboratory ships that could track from the radar and send that information into the algorithmic control system. And that was digitized, that was actually working quite well. And that move we had to remove radars or conserve the ships as being removed radars. And that worked. But the whole technology base was bespoke at that time, and it was driven by soldiers. And remember, all operators on system was uniform people. The whole scenario, the whole command rooms, we have three naval reporting centers and one headquarter to cover the whole Danish territory. Back then in 84, when the system was delivered to a Danish Navy, I went back to Denmark and moved to all say where the headquarter was situated. And then I still have dialogue with the customer and that was basically what started my thought of having my own little company because I knew how the system was working. There was not too many Danish guys doing it and was a French guy and I was supporting it. And therefore, them was expensive to have a French engineer sitting in Denmark. So I promised them I could do it for them at a good price. We negotiated price with French guys. And then we took over the maintenance of the system and back in 85. That started the company basically. We have a maintenance contract for the Danish Navy through Talism. And from there, they drove into, there was first step to build the company. But we may change that system. We also had an idea that we might have learned from building that system at that time. And the one of the key things was interability. Make input to the system. Digitize input to the system basically. At that time, one thing that defends organizations globally, they're good at standardizing, especially in nature. If anything, nature is a really superb organization in terms of standardizing everything and the work from little details of what is position, what is a distance down the details. You know, you can report things and dates, not misunderstood when they exchange the data. At that time, there was what's called ADAPE-3 was allied data procedure protocol number three. It was a text based message that they could exchange data between everything basically ship, shore, ship, land, sea, air, sea, everything was hundreds of messages. That was hard code inter-system. When you need a naval report from ship, send in this format. And then they put it on remote typewriters and then tell the text. Tell the text to yes. Tell the text to us. And of course, a full of errors. A lot of errors. So when it came into system was the big mess about changing the land, double sland and hype and whatever have to make sure it could be read by the computer. We thought some things wrong here. Something we need a tool in the author pattern. So when you write the message, you should be sure when you send it, it's correct. So it was idea to build our first product called IRIS. And IRIS is a messenger between the olipic guts and into the rainbow. It's where all the gold are. So we call it IRIS. And that was the first product we started. I say, okay, we need to help at least start in the names. Navy. So we can build a tool, a PC basically. You can put on ships and the radio room or complications center, whatever have. And then you can edit the text here and then send it into mine control. And then you can be passed automatically. Thereby you can increase the speed of communication and have a faster, have an updated situation picture. So that was the first thing we did. And then in the early 90s, there was a NATO program headed by the Germans called automated miss handler. A.M.H. Automated miss handler was a NATO program where the NATO want to buy one common inter-pability platform or system. They could use an old system as components. So when you build that in, you could then generate messages. And then we make sure they exchange them without error. And the new standard was with there, but if you don't do it right, everything get wrong. So it's like writing a big text and every common, every point had to be correct and no miss but no nothing. So we build a compiler kind of thing. We could have some technology. But why we could pass the text and make sure that when they were sent out there on radio system, it was correct. No data was missing. So that was the first product. And we had been in the German after long competitions under the German Navy decided to stabilize on our system and put that in as a NATO system. So work for a long time with the Germans Navy and work with the US Air Force, a MISER group in the US and to standardize all to use what called USMTFs. They have their own version, but more or less the same thing. Then different customers came in to this and we end up have a lot of customers around the world just doing this component. If you need to do our inter-pability buy this product, you can then assure you can talk to anybody with that module. So it was very flexible. We have something called a MISER handler which is the one you use as editor and we have a system where you can create MISERs. So NATO headquarters and the US headquarters had and the Australians had our author tool. So you could design new MISERs. You could put reviews all the countries and could review them and then make sure they have their comments in. So once they agreed this new standard, that's a new version. It's a native business tool to all the right users at the same time. And we could see which users is not updated what versions are the users. So we could see that for instance, the Danish Navy was version three and the German was version four. Then we could do the translation between three and four also in the system. So we don't need to operate all at the same time because we know budgets and constraints of money and whatever could not make it an update for all at the same time is based what NATO expected. But real life is a different version because of all kind of local intrusions. So we built a system and what success worked for that for many years and established our first office in UK. So as we said, we didn't want to sell it in the danglies language we want to send with the English language. So we established the office in 92 in the UK in 94 in the US because I was big market old and US. And that was a start basic for us coming in selling product outside. Then also we, to some extent as a company, we translated our headquarters into development side and the offices around us are sales. But that worked for some years. And I think the most common crypto system at that time used our component. But it was still at that time very, very bespoke. You can have the own friends of the own, everyone have the own national system built by national champions. And it was more or less the same but different. And some worked, some didn't work. But they all tried to follow more or less the same nature standards. But they couldn't still talk to each other at that time. All the experimentation I remember was I was astonished about cabling was all about have the right blocks with the right cabling. And then if we happy, if it could have was called the true connection and we could exchange data. But no, it was not to exchange data. No content was not looked at what we exchanged with data lines. There were two, three and four on the X25 protocols, very nerdy, down to the cabling and power. And so that level we did in the instability. And we came up and put it on top so we could exchange data between the systems here. But most of the contractors didn't like our flexibility. Because if they had flexibility, they could change and update without them getting a lot of money. So you used it, but they locked it. Specific version. So we could not use our really dynamic way of updating standards. Because why should they make integration of the whole system? Because we just took the minimum, perhaps I can say now we can exchange all the messages you want to your customer at that version you said we should do. Oh, you want to upgrade. Then you have to pay extra. And we were a little bit frustrated about because that was not what we showed the customer and that we showed the integrators. They could do it much more dynamic at that time, but that was how they made money. They locked them into this specific conversion. So in that time you were that every nation had their own system with their own supplier. It was like sovereign solution. And you had a few big players that have some international reach. And they began having a product or some extent, but it was more in terms of they have one system, then they copied to another one and then built a new version for that specific customer. Of course, they could not see how they could do two questions in products. Then the thing this army came out for tender for the army. Of course, we built for build a system for them. But we lost. We lost to another company called Masked Data, which is a big shipping company. We saw no clue about building mine control. We thought and rightly so they failed. There was some time. So they saw the company off to SAP and Sweden. That also didn't work well with that system. So we said, okay, fennel. In the meantime, because we lost, we were like, it was a big disappointment. We were like crying a year or two, just really disappointed. And we could see it was never going to work the way they operated the system and the way they built the system. So it said, okay, fennel, on our own funding, we built now one and four, the command control system. That could be used in different nations. So we started building test systems. So we could test other systems into mobility because we got that in that building. That time we called ourselves the interpobility company. We knew about the interpobility. So we built a minimum command control system that could do, you know, things was dot on the maps at that time. I could do all kinds of communication. And we could exchange data with all kinds of sources and systems from John here and integration with the center from John here. A minimum system that could do planning and could do dots on the map basically. And we sold it to Slovenia and still have it for today. Of course, the UK bought some for testing and all that. We have five or six systems for testing. And then we followed the Danish program and we could see that will end miserably. I need to end up in a court case between the Danish army and the splur and they got some money back. And we decide now is time for hit the things on. So we negotiated and we end up having a contract. If we could do what they expected us to do with the old system and we could prove it, we could get the contract. And we did prove we could do one to one and we could prove we could interpobility because they failed basically not in a feature function, but they failed interpobility. They could not talk to anybody. It was a again a closed system. And this what the American called the big ugly betty. I think they called our engine. That can do all this stuff we can do is the thing to make command control work. That gave us some confidence and now we can do something. And that was the first real command control customer we grow into to them after having more test systems and into build system for a testing for other ones. Then we start having all kinds of features and functions added to in the product and we decided we wanted products. You want to build product and many customers and around the world so will you completely out of your mind. How will we ever believe that bridge and the Germans and the French would have same system? It was like never going to happen. And you get that right? Because leading up to that point, you can't imagine it. Exactly. It was like do you think you can track Guinness in the French or like replace it with wine or you know it was fundamental the thought that we should have something a product that one that could never survive. And back in the days I had the view we got the idea from ERP financial system in the companies. Back in the 80s and early 90s big companies had their own IT departments. They built their own financial system. Yeah. Because that's what it did. And then Microsoft come around, SAP come around, all to come around that have whatever have a lot of products. And early 2000 and around that time frame. If somebody at CFO say I want to build my own I think you'd be put out in a screen shot. It was like two to crazy if you come with that view. And we have the same idea. We have the same stubbornness say in some days. The general can not say I want my own. Some will say forget it. So we buy a product. And so we continue insisting that we will change what we record from the bespoke to coach. That was our theme for PR. Yes. We want to really fight this bespoke issue and go the commercial of the shelf road. We succeeded with the message and we could show and we have always been show not tell mode in terms of we knew if you're competing with the big defense contractors. The B.A.s, the Lockheed, say, Regents, the tireless, we will lose on top of us. We're not good about. We're good at selling the big thing here. So we said okay we cannot compete that one but we can compete on quality on charter. We think we're better outside developed than they are. And we found out that we have one focus in life. Common control systems. All our energy went to this focus. So in the beginning when we started maybe only about 60-80 people working on that product. But we saw the other big companies have a lot of things they're competing for the same aren't e-money. So sometimes they get something and sometimes they don't. So building a product for them was really not sustainable. And many of them came out to say it is tonic components, hardware, world, and know they need software. But it was not where they came on. We were born DIGSEL. That's our DNA. We are software company. First of all, they were a tonic component. First of all, and then they need to add the software to sell their stuff. So we could see if you go into a new customer, they came with PowerPoint, we came with system. It's like if I want to try a new car, here's a key. Go dry. They'll come with a procedure to tell you what they were building three years time. Of course we want a lot of good things at that time. We didn't want complete systems, but we want test systems. Okay, let's try it. You can try it here. And we have always, until we have better start small and scale it. That big and fail it. So here's something grow tested, when that brigade or something. And then let's see, if it works, you buy more. I'm going to scale it after. That gives it also for the customer a kind of confidence that would be, we say, it would be also do deliver. There are two things that come out from the story of growth about the company. There are lots of things I want to pick apart. But let's just start with these two. One is that you say digital in your DNA. I would say that you're specialist, you're technical, you're understanding of the art of the possible as well as the ambition is quite staggering, particularly in comparison to some of the primes who one could say, I mean, the popular term is, they develop vaporware. There's a lot of talk, but nothing behind it. The second part is that, and you sort of glossed over it a little bit, but it comes to the heart of what you want. That relationship with your customer, which started with the Danish Navy and then grew to the Germans. But this idea that the relationship with the customer defines what you can do, how you grow, what it looks like, those two things combined seem to sit very centrally to everything you do. So I mean, you could do a lot of stuff in software, but it has been right from the start very related to the military problem, and it answers the military problem almost before the military know they have it, because there was never a thought in a general's or an admiral's head going, I want to see the picture that the breadth's having, the friendship having, not something that occurs, because they grew up in a time where we're never going to see that information, it's not possible. You blending those two things together has given you like a really unique take on the problem setting how you develop, right? I think, you know, our philosophy is that and that we've grown more over time, because I've listened and burned fingers and stupid things, that a lot of good ideas are there, a lot of good ideas. We have 1400 employees now, and they have tons of ideas every day, and said we like to hear the ideas, some can be good ideas, but you need a customer, that thinks they're good idea, and if his customer thinks he will use it, don't need to buy it, but he could buy it and he would use it and he will help you test it, then he's a good idea, it's just an idea, and just ideas, they are who want good ideas, and good ideas is together with the customer, so we do not develop anything that don't have a customer in you, we can do small improvements to a product, but they all must be a customer case. We do this because the customer requests this net, or they have this kind, they want to go that thing, or they're complained about something, over here we can improve by doing this net, or their new features and functions, like the new thing is targeting and integration of targeting weapons, so on there. That's because it's customer driven, so we have very aware of how we drive it, and how our organization around custom focus is that our business model is very simple, it's like onion, the inner ring is the license, then the customer pay a maintenance to keep it evergreen, so it's not that you buy one and then have to buy another one in three years, you can do that, but that simply does make sense, they pay a maintenance and we make sure they have new features and functions and upgrade security patches everything all the time, we release two times here, then you have services, is to want to do now your board it, and we can integrate it so it works in your vehicles, or you can do training, or whatever you make sure, it come up on the operational system in your environment, and we currently defining a force circle, which is called value crease, where we now your board system is installed, how to make sure you get value out of this, so how can we make sure your doctrines, your SOPs and everything is upgraded, so they also fill out the new way of operating, because one thing is you buy a system, install the vehicles, but you don't know how to use it, so we have now 50 customer plus around the world, so we can say okay you know your type of operation looks like these guys over here, so we can take and we can divide it, connect with them and learn what they do, or we can help you, get the SOPs and then generalize SOP, whatever, so don't see where you come from, and help you 80% of the work of the box, here's how you operate, when you pass everywhere, how to coordinate it, pretend to show it, how you do with very specific thing on the battlefield, to the high overall planning of the five points planning process, write down to the shoulder, how do you behave, why should the screen visit in the vehicle, when you open up and you shoulder leave the vehicle, what should be the last thing they see before at least they should see a screen, so they know when they sit there in the dark in the vehicle, there's no windows, and then they know exactly when they dole come down, okay my enemies and the lift and my friends are on the right, and I need to go there and there, today if there's no screen no command controllers just open, then you have to find out where you are, these kind of things is what will help them in this fourth circle about creating value of what they bought, and make sure the training really goes in and you become a useful tool, and that for me is the difference that the CT system brings right at the micro level, right, because this is not about your partnership with militaries, about the technical connectors, or the detailed set of requirements that come out from a acquisition office, it's not about the J6, the G6, the N6, it's not about them, this is about the guys on operations, this is about the three-shot, right, this is about I'm going to use this to fight with, and that's a very different set of conversations, but it's also of course the J6 and all the functions, of course it's functions after, because I have to touch the functions, they're also uses, but it's all the way down to how, how did it mean in the structure, what did mean, how did it really operate it, we kind of testing for it, so we have built something called Battlefield Healthcare, where we have a big business also in Dune Healthcare, the biggest Scandinavian in running hospital systems, we have three or five weeks, then we should train half million people with our system to running hospital daily, so we take a lot of knowledge in and say okay, what happened from the point of injury, all the way to the road one, road two, road three, road four, hospital team, make sure, and that is something we have seen is also amazing, we saw that it cannot be right, you have a piece of paper on you, or you have a little tag, you have the block test on your shoulder, on the uniform, but there's a lot of things you need to know, we learn from a crane, that if you get the wrong medication you can simply die, and they don't dare put the real medication into you, if they don't know, I allergic, because you could simply die, but give the wrong thing here, so something traumatic, things could happen if you do the wrong thing with the medication, and move to people, so we learned that that is still paper-based, and also paper-based in most places in nature, so we build the application, and that is now being tested, Germany bought, first customer bought the system, there's now been tests in other nations, so we get out, out with the medics people, the teams, are they the first thing we talk is, we're the medics, it's fine, we talk to general doctors and all the chief general doctor, whatever they call, and the chief medic up here, but we need to talk to those on the battlefield, the combat medics and the medics, how it's just to use, and we're currently taking the two green and the them use it also, to see if we get what can they use, our interface correct, is that the way you operate in real life, or is too much, structuring, say, and too much paperwork, instead of real war, because it's easy sitting off, say, you do this and that, and then you push this and that, but you know, if your camera is down there, and he's wounded and lost his leg and screaming, you don't have too much time, you are in panic, and everything is up in there, and you need to make sure you also still give the right information, so if you get the helicopter on the rescue or whatever they know, when he's transferred to next pick-up on that, he is taken care of the right way, so it is to make sure the information is right, and that's again integration with customer at the real level, not at the laboratory, and not at the schools, that's already important, but the real input comes from real exercises, and real use of it. Since I've been working with you guys, I've always been fascinated by the fact it's like having an Apple phone, you get your updates every six months, and they add new features, but that is driven, not just by user feedback, but it's also driven by operational experience, so I was fascinated to see in Ukraine, the lessons that came out there in terms of C2 systems, particularly in terms of connectivity, so you can't connect a lot of the time you'll C2 system, because on the front line, that electronic connectivity singles you out, and as soon as you connect two minutes later, you can expect a 155-mil shell landing on your position relatively close, and so your approach to areas of denied or contested electronic connectivity has been based on combat experience, not just training experience of the user. There's a huge amount that goes in there that is not just about, yes, somebody who is exercising on Soulsby plane or in the central planes of Germany or in the forest, but it's very different, and somehow you have to blend all these lessons and this understanding together, and still test it, and make sure it's user-compatible, actually down selecting what you're going to do, it must be a real problem. We run our product a little bit like your runner company, okay, so we have a CEO at a product manager, he owns the product, it's his life, it's his product, he decides everything, then we have a product board, it's like the board, I am part of the board, CEO, part of the board, and the management for the operation through the runs, the whole development, and the sales guys who have all the sales members, not the whole team, but we are eight, nine permanent members, and then they come in with a different specialty in the meeting, but then we meet every month, more or less, and we have all the hours we have to introduce in the product every year, it's divided up in features and functions and products, how much we put in our front line, our headquarters, our AI platform, inside our training platform, and then they come percent what they have, and what they have, what called battle cards, it is what new features do it, so we know how much money, when they're ready, and when can we, but until we then plan for the next release, what is in, very detailed, and things can happen, recent meets every month, this is something can happen, we have learned from this place, this is now important to take this in, to take another out, so we can always dynamically change it onto the, now it's caught up, now we stop coding, then you start testing, then you deliver, but that product board is key in deciding what comes in, and there are four elements in the, we talk about, that is what we need to win the new customer, could be a new thing, what to improve errors, safety, security, cyber, kind of stuff here, then there are specific requests for customers, then let's call the wow effect, the last one is something saying okay that was cool, because if you get a new system you need to make sure it's also taken in, like when you download a new version for Apple or something like wow cool, I love that, it should be a little bit positive, surprise when you use it can do something you have not seen before, so that's the four elements we try to put in, when the customer keeps our customer happy, can customers happy, make sure we don't have any errors, and it's more security wise, all the, about cyber security, and then the wow effect, that's the four elements we put in, and we always put in a split, that way we customize focus, we try to see what's the voice from the market, could that in, could that in the problem, that's why we meet every month, make sure we update, it's not a half year side, it delivers after every six months, but every month we align what we heard in the market. The thing that's always quite interesting in software companies, particularly when they're operating in a military sector, is a lot of the time software people and the military don't really mix very well, they're completely different, mindsets, logic trains, mentality, rhythms of operating, one's very disciplined, one is far more creative in many ways, and sort of a femoral and blending these two things together is not easy, have you like just said, right, we're going to employ lots of veterans, or how do you work that plan? Every, you know, a sit-away is a suite of products, an Abrepard like headquarters, Frontline, which is a vehicle system, and it's a storage system, and so on here, have their own product teams, again. That team consists of a product manager, who runs planning and the timelines, about user experience guy, who is so understood, how would it look at field, how architects have the overall thing and the operational guy, who owned this, is his system, that part of the headquarters and their former military person, that is the head, and he have a number of personnel, they respond for the outcome of the real input, so they are the outcome of what we built is something that have operational use, because if you have technicians sitting doing that, they have no clue what they're doing, so they are like first receiver of what we built, they are part of the planning process, what we need to do, and they're part of accepting what we built is something that we use in real life, and that of course are conflicts, and there should be conflicts, I don't believe in a company, if you kind of challenges are, you need to be pushing and go to the edge, I always thought that system we should be a little bit like, very close to the cliffs, and sometimes one leg out in the open air to take the chance, well known that if you take the next step you can fell down, but there's always something to help you up, it's not that we kill the whole company, but we have to take risk, we have to take new steps and develop new stuff before the customer's air, we've developed our complete now cloud-based solution, there's no customer, but we convinced it will be a customer, we built AI into before, it was really something asked for, because we couldn't vince the customer last year, that's the technical input, and then we start talking about all security and how to deploy it, that's a wheelchair input, how do we deploy this stuff here? What's the message that you have to go to tell the customers with the wheelchair rank? What will they perceive? So it's a combination of you need to choose some things, I always consider ourselves what we call bind-specific software, so you have a basic of our technology, on top of that technology we have the domain knowledge, and you have this good old thing, think out the box, don't do it, stay inside the box, expand the box from within, never go outside the box, because if we go outside the box, we go outside our domain knowledge, and we become technologists, we have only technology and no domain knowledge, we need always in our companies to combine domain knowledge and software technologies. So I'm fascinated by this part, because everything you've spoken about, about what you've built has been about, maybe it's because I've driven it, the military domain part, and there's healthcare and other systems, education, all that other stuff that you do, and there's the technical side, nowhere have we talked about the business part of this, the business part of this, anyone external would come in and go, yes, you were the interoperability company, yet you could have done anything with that, you could have gone massive in a whole variety, yet you stayed in C2, you stuck up a flag up and said we do come on a control, and you didn't do the business thing, which is right, diversify, I've got this massive opportunity, I'm pretty much world leading in interoperability, in connecting stuff, I'm not going to do that, my flag is C2, this is where I am, it almost feels like you're on a mission to achieve something rather than running a business, is that fair, listen, I'm not saying the business is massively successful, but of course we run a business, but we also have a mission, and you're right, we could use all other sectors, but it's not as mature, the two sectors are interoperability is important, that is defence and healthcare, defence more than healthcare, but there are standards, and the coming more and more centres, now you've been centres for exchange and patient data across borders and so on, that is right down our alley, we love that, when the net centres, we are also in the more civilian security of markets, like the national security and critical infrastructure, there we work with some of the bigger institutions, the national power companies are TSO as called central power, they have the impression lines across the country, why don't we help you build the standards, we can help you be a part of the European standard, say some of the bodies, because we know about standards, and that has been received well, some take our advice, and some we part of the group somewhere, because two bigger products that are scalable international unique standards, our business model as such is that we want to build products, because a software company or company with a product gives a company identity, we become the interability company, they come on control company, or they in a different sector, we they will try to patient record system company, they know we can do this, we can do home care and all kind of stuff here, but if we could build for Danish solution, we could build a Danish army system, and build a system, but that could never scale the business, it'll be a project, and that's not fun, because it's not scalable and it becomes a Danish solution, we have this ambition, we need to have a model, and our business model is today, it starts the same thing, the product, the maintenance, the services, and the value creation of it, everything to go into that model, now we turn it from being out to run the product, to now run the whole company, that model, so everything we do have to end up in a product, you can go to start with one product, if you have a now we will relatively new in the critical infrastructure, yeah, we have some questions we work with, and they how do we lay out, how do we plan, and how do we build a big picture, just like the fence have a surveillance picture of what's happening, how to make that for the TSO and the TSO, the power supplies, local power supply companies, what's the transformers, what's all the acid to have around the country, what's the station, and that's what we're building, but we start with one company, and then always look at okay you have the solution, what's the standard, how can we scale it so we can go to Germany and use it for them, or go to Sweden, or France, whatever, and have a solution, we can sell it for us, because if you just do a project for customer, it becomes a project for that customer, and so what, we enter money, but it's not run in a long term, it's just solution, we have a mission of try something that we can go more international scale and have a product we can solve issues across the world for, not only one person, one project, a one project, one customer. There's a great presentation that was given at a NATO conference about how your systems being used by local governments to do resilience and stuff, right, that's when bridges mysteriously stopped working, when ammunition shipment was going to Ukraine, it was being brought in, and the bridges four times mysteriously stopped working, but they were using this system to understand where stuff was and pull it together, that all came from the original military requirement which is evolved, and the military requirement for C2 has evolved, you must have felt a different kind of a driver, they've been so central to your conversations about the requirement, about what you want to do, what you need to, do you feel that the military understanding attitude towards C2 has changed over four years? We have a lot of things happening and things are moving fast these times, especially from the lessons learned from Ukraine. The beginning was dots on the map, digitizing the planning process, and it was a doctrine, the big thing, time was not a issue, basically, then you have the net enabled in the early 2000s, still today maybe some time years ago, start talking multidimane, but then was net enabling about connecting everything, and now you talk data centric, you talk multidimane operations, and that have shifted, multidimane is still for some it's a big word, it's a big concept that I don't think too many people have real, real, inside it, what it means, because if I ask 10 different people to get 20 different opinions of what multidimane is about, so it's still in the versions of being something, but for us it's about connecting the services, so we'd have fire module for instance, we have this standard for ascars, then that's a NATO standard that can share asset between nations, so we can have a group of soldiers dancing, so to say we need to fight that assets, and you can see on our system that the right effector is owned by the British, so we ask them on that ship could you please launch the one on that target, that's what we can do coordinate, is that multidimane or certain net enabled, it's a long discussion here, but the fact is that now more or less real time, you connect different sensors and effectors in a network and do that operation, so it's becoming whatever we call it, it's becoming more integrated, so the stovepipe issues with a lot of systems is now being integrated, and even within the army for instance, you could still have nations, I have artillery systems, one system, and the planning system, another one, and the fighting system in vehicles, and it's different suppliers and differences that doesn't really chop together, there's a single line, a very simple way of integrating, but it's not real time, it's not an integrated system, and that is over time a thing will be much more integrated, because speed is become a big thing, and what we also see is happening now that lessons learn again from green, over the last two, three years, first of all drones is knee-thing right now, that's a different chapter, but you also see the thing about everything had to be a move, you could not have a big headquarter with thousand soldiers and tents and fixed buildings and data centers and so on here, because that's the first thing and we'll destroy it, if you don't want it to go after these fixed links, so everything is on the move, headquarters data centers everything in trucks and have to be moved, so we have to work on the move, that is a new thing also we learned how to be much more effective in our communication structures, our data, so we can support the on the move transition, because you cannot have heavy bandwidth, as you add a headquarters fixed lines, you can have a lot of data in here, you cannot do the same on the move, so it means something about how to use AI, how to do all kind of data compression and stuff, make sure we use different communication lines at the same time, this whole pace concept, and about different communication lines for different communication times, so the time, critical if it becomes first and they use the first one if it's available, and then you take the lower one out, so it's all about this on the move, have changed a lot, and then you add to that you add the drones which put a more time pressure on the decision making, decentralized decision making, but still hopefully coordinated, and the time from what happened on the battlefield to the headquarters where they decide something which may be far away from the front have to be shortened, so we see that technology trend go very fast, and you know it's easy to use modern technology, we just use satellite or use 5D, yes, but that's the first thing in real life and destroy it, and you cannot use it as I think the agreement has one hundred meter, one half a kilometer, a kilometer, a five kilometer, ten kilometers and a 20, so within these zones are more less communication available, as I know they drive into something then there's no more communication, and therefore it's easy to restart, I would say we just do this in real life, that's still something that I have to work also in denied areas, and on the WWU stuff, and you need special equipment and you need to have more and more intelligent systems that can work without connection for some time to you, when you come back again you can synchronize and like mission at work you can talk and you start here, so that's what we look into for the future, much more on the move, much more AI, but still make sure it works and the real benefit. So one of the things that you talked about was the digitization, lots of militaries have been talking about this for about five years, you've been on about this since the company started, right, I find it amazing, you know there's lots of money going into digitization now, everyone claims that they're doing digital first, and yet there still feels like a drive certainly across Europe and definitely in the United States, that there are still sovereign solutions being pushed at the price of interoperability, so flying in the face of the doctrine of multi-domain operations, those that are evangelizing for interoperability, there are still those that are pushing down the sovereign solution that fly directly in the face of the military aims and objectives that are written down in doctrine, in the operational experience of it, you must find this intensely frustrating, or is it just reality to you? You've been doing it for so long, yeah, there they go, they're back in the sovereign, you know, must have a must have their own company. It comes out to data, the issue here is data who owns a data, who has the rights to the data, and where's the data when something happens and can shut down the system. That is a real issue in real system making today in command control, so we see big, often very American system, that they have the ability, we saw that you bring to shut down the big kill switch, and at least here where I come from, then there might have been a lot of discussion about what will that mean in real life, do we have a kill switch, even discussion, other kill switch we don't know in the IF-35s, to bind system, your systems where data can be taken away, they take out, they leave the Denmark territory, and somebody have the data, we don't want them to have access to. How do we make sure we protect them, because there's some data somewhere that we cannot control, we cannot go kick and the computer eats here, some haven't, some don't. So I think part of the message for the future it'll be a sovereign data, make sure that you deliver systems that are your system, your data, it belongs to you. And how do you do that as a multi- I mean you service 50 countries, we have said some we call naive, but we said it's not our data, we provide a system, they have a lot of data, and we have not the ambition to say that we should have it own the data, even though if we did, we could, you know, earn photos on collecting data, but we also know that when it really comes down to the real life is that we have seen the reason I have many officers around the world now 15, 16 officers is that they want people working on system have the right flag on the shoulder, we cannot take a Danish guy or German guy and go to the UK, there have be UK flag on the shoulder, national security, UK clear people only access to the same Australia and New Zealand, whatever we are, therefore we said okay it's not our business to run the data, we provide everything if we want a cloud solution, you can buy cloud solution, if you want to run the nation, we can run the nation, no problem, if you want to run it on your own, the spoke, home builds, data center in Australia and middle, data, Australia, whatever we provide for you, it's your data, we keep it updated as long as you pay maintenance, they don't pay maintenance, we say thank you and then you leave for yourself, we just walk away, we don't take anything with us, I think that'll be a big thing in the future, do you have to have the big, the cloud system though you come and put everything in the cloud and they can shut down that cloud for you, so the things, that's one issue on data and that it will be an issue, at least something happens to find some solution around, who owns the data, when is the sovereign solution, and when is the sovereign solution plus something else, and in talking to tell you in detail, all kind of stuff here that are more complicated, so that's one thing I think is important, another thing I think that'll be driving a lot of issues in the photo, it's time, and because systems are so ingrained and basically it's from vehicles of Australia, everything happens, and they can talk, they can have a 5E protected or mobile 5E or they have a radius, they have a combat radius, they can talk around, they have everything, all kind of communication media, it really works, and they log in, it's not been jamped by the adversary, you have so much data, you can always shut it, so when do you need to encrypt, what kind of encryption, or how long time do you need to have that data you're sending, casemite, why do you just have a very good and heavy encryption on your mobile phone, software encryption, do you then need to have encryption device, same in the vehicle, so can you paste all that locally software, because the information flows so fast that what happened to in the ago is less simple, you encrypt the plans and so on, that's of course you put that on different communication lines, but they here now battlefield, running everything has to be coordinated, and especially in multi-national operations, if you need to coordinate between through three nations, they normally have to go up the chain to somewhere up there, where it's at a cross-over, then you go down the another channel to the another nations, instead of talking, we talk together as two, if you have the same creature units, we can do it, but that requires today a massive hardware installation, more or less, if you have software based, we can chase a new algorithm and we can drop together tomorrow, and then we don't need to go up the chain down, because we can just within bridge could work together side by side tomorrow, if we just have the software based, because the data we exchange at the battlefield, it's updated two months after it's been sent, and you see everything because I've drawn it all over anyhow. Do you think all these requires things to change? You've talked about the future, C2 has across 40 years, there's never been like a knee jerk sudden massive changes there, I would say my observations are that it's been a a slow progression towards digitisation and technology, a lot of stays the same, but there's been no sudden, oh my god, when he's doing this, there haven't been those moments of that, I mean if you look at 1980s airline battle, you look at the experience in former Republican Yugoslavia, you look at the 2003 shock and all campaign, you look at Afghanistan, none of those delivered a moment that said in three days, I need this capability to do this, right? I don't see any way that can change, I don't think there is this sort of knee jerk requirement, but I don't have your perspective on it, do you think that we're likely to see this same sort of slow, not leisurely progression, but a progression and evolution, rather than something like absentee an AIK policy that would be a revolution in many ways in command of control? As I say, in a different place where I see something happen that changed the way people are thinking, Ukraine, first of all, I've been to a green number of time and see all the way out in the real fight is happening. And so how they just five, ten kilometers from front were sitting playing with drones, experimenting how to do new stuff and new software and you know coding, do stuff like okay, wow, okay, they try to always find something new and a new way of moving wounded soldiers on the new way with their moving ammunition, food and so they could avoid the capacity of this one, automated guided vehicles, doing kind of all expertise, and one big expertise and while they still have war going on, it was interesting to see. That changed the way, I think that in the threat from Russia, at least in the Nordic countries, more than we've seen before. And again, if I go back to see the COVID-19 period, how everything could change overnight more this, how hospice and success were changing and rebuild and reorganize to take in a lot of patient COVID, that when it really comes to something you can change fast. I see and feel it in some part of the world, I feel it in the Nordic countries, Poland, Baltic for sure, Germany also, then I don't feel it much more around. There's a lot of talks, a lot of things, but not big movements. And some countries too far away, they follow what's happening and but here where we sit hand on like that, there is a imminent threat. And we have our primates that for sure is good at telling what you think about the Russians, and then we have grown our defence budget from a few years ago, from 2.6 to now, we're close to 5% in 2030. So that's a lot of money put in. And if we just talked about that five years ago, they think we're crazy and the government loses. It's just something everybody knows. We've been naive, we're not investing in our defence, we have thought it never happened. And then we now see what happened to Green, so it's becoming important. And therefore I see trends in moving faster, in decision-making and making the real decisions, but still the outer pockets of slowniness and not resistance, I'll see more bureaucracy. Because you need to change the whole chain, not only we want to buy a new system, but then there's a consistent thing and then there's a logistics thing and then there's a change of thing that needs to be changed also. It seems to be very difficult to, even though in that sector have a command control, a command thing, to have to change it over time. It takes a long time. There's a balance, I know, and you're great at this, because you're very comfortable with change and the sort of chaotic environment that it brings, you're comfortable with the uncertainty that comes with it, which in business is usually associated with a start-up, right? It's like, you'll take those risks, you've talked about those risks. I am, you know, my military background, right? So I am less comfortable with it because I don't want a system where someone can say tomorrow, I don't like this C2 system anymore, and this new unicorn over here has promised me a new one. Let's swap everything to that now. And I want some barriers in their way. I want some time that says, I don't think they can deliver. And despite all the promises and everything else, I think there's a lot of vaporware there, you know, right? So there's a balance. And in national security, more than anything else, we had a famous general who once said there was no longer any use in tanks, and effectively had a plan to sell off all the British Army's tanks and get rid of them and probably the same with artillery. And you won't go to Ukraine and find someone who says, we don't need tanks. Neither will you find it in Russia or Yemen or Sudan. People who are engaged in more for don't say, let's get rid of this. I have this enjoying worry that this desire to constantly shift at what's seen as a speed of relevance to go for speed of decisions never gives us better decisions. There's a balance there, surely, right? Speed, decision, better decision, better decision, not necessarily takes longer time to make. I think sometimes you just need a decision. But the impact of decision, something, there are consequences that haven't seen sometimes. In this command controlled environment, I think that of course, there are factors system being made, and we need that system to run in a faster system, but replacing it and changing it is not simple task, because there are a lot of stuff around it. We're just providing software. We don't provide any hardware. So, as a whole chain, the fact that we had to make sure it works, but it could be done differently. It could be done differently. It's more simple than let's make the whole thing as we used to do 20 years ago. I have a little bit like when you buy a vehicle, fighting vehicles today, you buy it without comes, without screens, no nothing. It has a bunch of cables and you can connect what you want to. When I bought my first car many years ago, I had no radio, no nothing, had a little thing in the middle of dashboard, I could put in a buy a blue poem radio, whatever you want to and then put it in and then I could see right then, okay, I hear my radio and maybe a tape recorder, whatever you have at that time. We still have that level in defense in the fighting vehicles. There's nobody providing. Here's a system. It's including radio system, everything's here, and you can just put yourself then you want. Nobody. I don't understand why not. Then there'll be much, much further buying vehicles and having a degeneration spread out to the battlefield. It's a habit from beginning. It's these different changing requirements, isn't it? It comes back to countries of military still specifying details and right now we need to sacrifice details in favor of speed. Yes, and also you have, that's a big European thing. We have to sacrifice some suppliers for others. You cannot still have three different companies providing different aircraft. We cannot have ten different vehicles providers. We need to standardize more. Maybe they're ten different, fine, but they all build the same thing. They build that thing we want to be. Our three different type of vehicles because it's all the digital nightmare. If you have ten different suppliers, ten different engines, ten different everything, that was less than learned off of a green, that logistics is a super important issue. We knew it, but now they know because they got everything sent over there. But we had to send us minted missions and spare parts and send stuff over there. It's not helping them. Somebody have to be the adult in the room in Europe and nature may be say, we need three different types or whatever. Maybe we compete on how to do that. That's a drawing to build and then the best men have the job or whatever. You buy it in South, for you, to South, for you, so we have a production all over Europe and not one single point of failure. That's also a different way. But we need in the defense to make the decisions on a more national level and a European level to be sovereign and not depending on everything from outside. Because there have been very sovereign solutions. Friends, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain, maybe, have that big production of things. Do we need to have five, six suppliers, different ways or do we just have one or three different models built around the same? It's a software approach to defense, isn't it? It's like, you get it and you can see some industries doing it, is they designed from a manufacturer and assembly. And the thing that costs governments, the customer, is the design, right? Someone pays for the design. That's what makes you the big money for the architects. But then you have factories everywhere. They're producing this stuff that are producing models of the same thing. But they're producing individually and you pay those. But they might be slightly different. But the core is still coming out from factories in Spain, in France, in Germany, in Poland, in Finland, and Sweden. And this is the way you generate mass. You're not losing any jobs. In fact, you're probably still doing it. You're reducing cost of the taxpayer. This is the software approach to manufacturing design, right? And with modern construction tools, this is not like 4,000 welders in a shipyard. This is infinitely possible. Of course. You look at a modern car factory. It's robots. Why cannot they build fighting vehicles? Of course, I can, if we wanted to. And I think that we need to scale here, because that needs a lot of stuff. And if everybody's a designer and little things, it'll be why? I'm sold on a software web development and I'm sold on the opportunities that exist. But there are things in technology that people talk about that worry, that AI being one of them, the sentient capability of things that the terminator moment, complexity, aliens, climate change, all these things, it feels like with a really tough moment for society, if not humanity. One of the things that keep you up at night, are there things that you go, this really worries me, whether it's about the company or elsewhere, whether it's about business, whether it's about great power competition or Russia, whatever. What is it that keeps you as a businessman with 40 years of running your own business? What keeps you up at night? For time being what keeps me up, what worries me a lot is that everything have changed, the political constellations and especially the way the US is operating. Contrarily a lot that you have four or five big tech companies in the US. They have extremely important US Army and services. The four of them have had that CTO, CEO, or whatever top-ranking officers in the company, been colonel and said that you have to drive the transition in US defense force. That's okay, basically, if you do it, but the way they do it, the way we perceive as competitor, is that they have the power to say, "You, Mr. Denmark, you better buy our system, if you want our data." Then we're not in any more commercial business, and we're in politics. If they have uniform people selling your system to AI partners, that makes me wake up at night. It's fair, there's no competitors. If that's a future, why do you find a food and this one? Because it's a political question. But I have a little bit that, okay, fan of. Good dude now, because we don't have an alternative. Therefore, we need to build that transition. Therefore, we need to make sure we can build sovereign solution that you, as a nation, UK, German, Australian, European, whatever you can do to yourself. And not be dependent on big tech companies that want to run the world. That's one of the things I have that we've seen what happened in Ukraine when they shut down, styling, and until then, platform. And when they do things to say, "Okay, fair enough, we are really depending on a few big companies. And if somebody wants to say, stop them, and they do it, we'll problem." Therefore, our ambition is to build solution terms. We, that's why we say, it's all yours. It's your system, your data. We don't take anything away. If you don't want a system, or just leave to hands and leave, we don't take anything with us. So that's our current answer to the challenge. But I think it's totally unfair, unfair, there's nothing called fair in this business here, but it's a new way of doing business. That uniform people sells to uniform people. I say it one time. Michael, congratulations on the 40 years. I think it's amazing. And genuinely, fascinate to see it from a different side. And I think we're all grateful of what you've done, what you've done with the company, and the options you brought to C2. Michael, thank you very much. And that was our chat. I was really taken with many of Michael's ideas and his perspective on the evolution of C2 from a system's view. The breaking of that idea of sovereign requirements to one of exchanging information was something I'd forgotten. You might, if you're old enough, remember why C2 across militaries, even between fighting armed ladle-owned individual services, was not considered important, but how times have changed. Or maybe they haven't. As the US Army seems to want to prioritize AI over interoperability in C2 terms, maybe we're reverting to sovereign demands over the needs of the fighter. Well, economics went out over utility. Maybe the next decade will tell us whether this is going in the right way or taking the wrong turn at a junction. Systematic. Join your partners and allies already using our cutting edge C4 ISR sit-away suite. I hope you enjoyed the show. As well as telling your friends and colleagues about it, please do hit the like or subscribe buttons. You could even leave us a review. The episode is produced by ReneersThinky.com as a show for the waiver, the home of intellectual curiosity and challenging thinking for military professionals everywhere. Thanks for listening.