The current inter-agency doctrinal tools to integrate the decision-sharing elements of battle command at the operational level for defense support to civil authority operations are inadequate under conditions of extremely degraded communications. The rapidly integrated, often ad hoc, civil-military command structures suffer an over-reliance on the availability of digital connectivity to overcome basic frictions of organizational culture. We are not prepared for a digital blackout. Under the conditions of a catastrophic incident within the United States, the prospect is high for a period of -- command and confusion‖ immediately following a natural disaster or a major event of suspicious origin, such as an industrial accident or cascading failure of a major power grid. This work examines domestic incident response and defense support to civil authority through the tensions between joint military doctrine, namely Joint Publication 3-28 Civil Support, and interagency guidance, articulated in the National Incident Management System. Doctrine acts as the institutional system of record for organizational decision-making on how to view and how to approach the problem of contested disaster response. An adversary postured to exploit gaps and seams between civil-military responders suffering from degraded connectivity can derail public audience receptivity to official communications. This research proposes a framework in defense support to civil authorities for the mutual consideration of battle command, knowledge management, information operations, strategic communication, and psychological operations. During domestic incident response, high levels of uncertainty may meet with low levels of technological reliability. Should technology falter or fail, commanders may not have the right tools to conduct battle command during defense support to civil authority operations. The findings and recommendations presented demonstrate the need to divert the current focus on the syntax of incident response communication and to draw out the discussion on the semantics of official civil-military communication. The argument must shift from the rules of response to the meaning of responders in ways that account for both the roles of public audiences and the risks from adversarial exploitation.

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