We live in an age in which … honesty is possible only when it skirts the edges of cynicism. All this is rather tragic. … Yet there is beauty in our tragedy. We are, at least, rid of some of our illusions. We can no longer buy the highest satisfactions of the individual life at the expense of our social injustice. We cannot build individual ladders to heaven and leave the total human enterprise unredeemed of its excesses and corruptions.—Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society

https://ttj.sagepub.com/content/65/3/279.full.pdf

We Have Met the Enemy And

/pdf/command-and-control-lexical-grammar-c2lg-specification-5s2dtch5bs.pdf

Command and Control Lexical Grammar (C2LG) Specification

The paper presents the results of cooperative work done by three different research institutions. The cooperation concluded in a large field experiment with six heterogeneous unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is shown, that it is possible to do reconnaissance and surveillance, namely detection of pedestrians and vehicles, with an autonomous multi-robot system under real world conditions. The participants were all using different robotic middlewares and interfaces to the graphical user interface. Hence, it has been agreed to use common interfaces and standards for communication. The Robot Operating System (ROS) is used as a communication layer, supported by commercially available 3G mobile radio communication for large operating distances. A standardized markup language has been used for the description of tasks and feedback from the robots to the control station. Moreover, the applied UGV control strategies and the implemented approach for detection, tracking and classification are presented. The concluding field test showed that it is possible to realize a multi-robot system of dynamic size, and that such teams are well-suited to perform reconnaissance and surveillance without constant observation by a human operator.

Heterogeneous teams of unmanned ground and aerial robots for reconnaissance and surveillance - A field experiment

In the SISO product development group (PDG) on Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) a language is being defined that has the aim of enabling unambiguous interoperability between C2 systems on one hand and C2 systems, simulations or robotic forces on the other. In order to verify the C2 to simulation part of this claim, NATO MSG-048 used the JBML input to the PDG in C2-Simulation coupling experiments and demonstrated this at I/ITSEC 2007. The JBML (Joint Battle Management Language) is being developed by the C4I Centre at George Mason University (GMU). The JBML specifies the language using XML Schemas and provides web-services to store and retrieve the information in a JC3IEDM database. In the demonstration three national C2 information systems were used, namely the Netherlands ISIS system, the Norwegian NORTaC-C2IS and the US C2PC/CAPES. An editor for a formal C2 language, C2LG (C2 Lexical Grammar), provided by the German FGAN-FKIE institute was used as an add-on to two of the three national C2ISs. The C2LG has been built in order to support the BML grammar development. This paper describes the adaptation that was done to ISIS and NORTaC-C2IS using a C2LG editor. It also describes briefly the limited experiment that used the BML-enabled C2ISs to interface to two national simulators (the French SCIPIO and the Spanish SIMBAD).

BML-enabling national C2 systems for coupling to Simulation

An Indexed Bibliography of Genetic Algorithms with Fuzzy Systems

The NATO Modeling and Simulation Group Technical Activity 48 (MSG-048) was chartered in 2006 to investigate the potential of a Coalition Battle Management Language for multinational and NATO interoperation of command and control systems with modeling and simulation. In its May, 2007 meeting, MSG-048 decided to undertake as its first technical project a multinational demonstration, using the US Joint Battle Management Language (JBML) phase 1 prototype Web services as central infrastructure. The demonstration was presented at the I/ITSEC'07 and consisted of three different operational national C2 systems interoperating with three different national simulations, supported by the JBML Web services and an open source C2 visualizer from the US, and the C2 Lexical GUI from Germany. In all, eight software systems from six nations successfully interoperated. This capability was achieved in only six months, based on use of an Internet Reference Implementation that all parties could use to test from their home laboratories, along with a high level of cooperation among technical personnel and military subject matter experts from all participating nations. This paper will provide an overview of the interoperation technology and component systems used in the MSG-048 initial demonstration, describe the lessons learned in the process of creating the demonstration, and summarize the way ahead for the work of MSG-048, including its support for validation of the products of SISO's C-BML Product Group.

/pdf/nato-msg-048-coalition-battle-management-initial-4b2e4xm2w4.pdf

NATO MSG-048 Coalition Battle Management Initial Demonstration Lessons Learned and Way Forward

The NATO Modeling and Simulation Group Technical Activity 48 (MSG-048) was chartered in 2006 to investigate the potential of a Coalition Battle Management Language for multinational and NATO interoperation of command and control systems with simulation systems. Its work in defining and demonstrating a basic capability for this purpose has been reported in previous SIW papers. This paper addresses Phase 3 of the Technical Activity, which validated the BML paradigm by interoperation of multiple C2 and simulation systems in experimental support of operational military users. The new capability was the basis for a week-long event at Manassas, Virginia in November 2009, which was supported by a previous collaborative integration using the Internet. The experimental configuration combined six national C2 systems and five national simulations along with middleware from two other nations, including an updated BML server that implements the publish/subscribe paradigm for BML and a C2 Lexical Grammar interface that was used by several nations. BML provided a common C2-simulation linkage without humans in the information exchange loop. This paper describes the integration of national C2 and simulation systems, along with the successes and lessons learned. The results support further development of the BML concept and should inform the work of the SISO C-BML Product Development Group. We conclude with a projection of the work of MSG-085, the successor to MSG-048, which will focus on operational and standardization issues.

NATO MSG-048 C-BML Final Report Summary

This paper presents the experience gained during demonstrations carried out between Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain under the umbrella of the NMSG-085 / CIG Land Operation group. The demonstration, also presented in this paper, focuses on command post exercise training. It highlights the benefits of the use of standards to save LOCON resources and time during exercise preparation. The demonstration combines surrogate and operational C2 systems (SIR provided by France, SITAWARE provided by Denmark, C2LG-GUI provided by Germany, and TALOS provided by Spain) with simulations (SWORD provided by France, VR-Forces provided by the Netherlands). The demonstrations addressed first the use of an effective initialization process based on the MSDL standard. MSDL was enriched (extended) for these demonstrations; the rational and content of the enrichment are also presented in the paper. Second, the demonstration deals with the execution of an operational scenario derived from the VIKING 2011 training exercise. Hence, it highlights the use of C-BML for two new military areas: logistics and artillery. Corresponding C-BML schema improvements are introduced in the paper. In addition, the demonstration intends to show that C-BML is also relevant for C2 to C2 exchange.

Lessons learned from NMSG-085 CIG Land Operation demonstration

TNO (The Netherlands) and FFI (Norway) are cooperating in extending a COTS Computer Generated Forces (CGF) tool with a Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) interface for executing C-BML orders and issuing reports. Due to the lack of satisfactory models for command and control (C2)/combat management in existing CGF tools, TNO and FFI have investigated the use of external agent frameworks. Two different modelling paradigms have been used: Belief-desire-intention (BDI) and Context-based Reasoning (CxBR). As part of this work a Low-level Battle Management Language (Low-level BML) has been created for communication between the C2/combat management agents and the CGF tool over High Level Architecture (HLA). The hierarchy of combat management agents decompose a C-BML order into Low-level BML commands and tasks understandable by a CGF tool. The agents also receive Low-level BML events reported by the CGF tool and make use of these for agent behaviour and C-BML reports. This paper presents the structure of Low-level BML, how it is used and the rationale behind it.

N.M. de Reus

Papers

BML-enabling national C2 systems for coupling to Simulation

NATO MSG-048 Coalition Battle Management Initial Demonstration Lessons Learned and Way Forward

NATO MSG-048 C-BML Final Report Summary

Lessons learned from NMSG-085 CIG Land Operation demonstration

Low-level Battle Management Language