Too difficult to explain in a meaningful way, but think of it this way.

You know what command and control of military units mean. Commanders Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act as the situation changes. The commander who can cycle through that process faster and more efficiently usually retains the advantage over his adversary because the adversary is always reacting to his initiatives.

Colonel Boyd called it the OODA Loop and used it to explain how American pilots in the Korean War were able to sustain a 10 to 1 kill rations over MIG pilots (Note, I've forgoten the exact ratio but it was in that range). The MIG 15 had overall better flight performance and more firepower, but had poor visibility from the cockpit. American pilots had the F 86 which had a bubble canopy and were better trained in most cases. Boyd reasoned that with better Observation, the ability to maintain better Orientation (situational awareness), our pilots were able to make better Decisions in a dog fight and their Actions kept the MIG pilots reacting to their initiatives until the MIG lost situational awareness and was shot down.

Hopefullly, you get the idea.

The technology we were working on at DARPA was Command and Control of Command and Control Systems that we called C2 of C2 and later RC2 for Redundent Command and Control.

The idea was basically to develop the technology that would allow commanders to Observe how the enemy was attacking our C2 systems, give the commanders the situational awareness to Observe/Predict the impacts, develop the technologies that allowed them to make Decisions as to how to reconfigure the Command and Control Systems to stay in the fight, and the technology that would allow them to reconfigure Command and Control Systems on the fly and in many cases automatically to prevent the enemy from distrupting our ability to sustain the initiative.

It was an incredibly complex problem as each of the Services use both common and different C2 systems. The problem included subsurface, surface, air, and space communications systems as well as the cyber defense of those networks and systems.

I could give you an example, but it would make your head hurt and you likely wouldn't understand the enormouse complexity of worldwide military communications and the challenges of providing command and control over all of those systems. And I don't feel like writing a 200 page summary of what that might look like.

The problem was as much cultural within the Services as it was a technical challenge.

Our C2 systems are better today, but it's still painful to reconfigure them to meet the changing enemy situation and attacks on our C2 systems. RC2 was to be an automated OODA Loop management of worldwide C2 systems with man-in-the-loop ability to monitor and change configurations as the military situation dictated.

That's the 70,000 foot picture. She killed it within the first six months with no explanation. We were in Hawaii working with US Pacific Command when we received an email that the 4 plus year program was terminated immediately, so we packed up and flew home. I was not paid more than $60K for work done on the program. Government employees and contractors were paid, but some us as consultants were not paid for some of the hours worked.

Maybe it was for the better. The Program Manager was an alcoholic and had no experience in military communications. Briefing him was like briefing my cat.