HGC³AE² at the Degraded Edge: Human-Governed Curated-Context Authentication-and-Enforcement for Tactical-Edge Substrate

The HGC³AE² framework — developed at Series 1 P1 as the engineering grammar for governing agentic systems at the data-center scale — applies directly to the distinct architectural regime of the C5ISR tactical edge under DDIL conditions. The H half defines the operational envelope (with five reserved decision classes), the C³ half operates the substrate’s memory and learning (curation, WAL-cataloging, Supervisor curriculum), and the AE² half secures the boundaries through cryptographic authentication and fail-closed enforcement (with kill-switch provision).

The H → C³ → AE² ordering is load-bearing; inversion produces the AI-execution-before-human-governance category error. The paper specifies the §6 mandatory-section contract that every problem-unpack paper (P3–P11) implements, and includes a self-applying §6 — the contract applied to itself.

Series: The Implications of Edge Degraded Ops, paper 2 of 11. Sister paper: The Tactical Substrate (P1). Parent framework: Mitigating Confident Misalignment in Agentic Systems: The HGC³AE² Framework.

This is a v0.1-seed-rev3 — paper-grade rebuild from rev2 with operator-acknowledged page-count gate-bypass (23 pages vs 24-page floor). The bypass is documented in the source repo’s GATE-BYPASS-NOTE.md sibling. Other gates (peer-reviewed citation count, leak gates, structural compliance) all pass. Recovery path: v0.2-preprint §3 or §4 expansion.