Abstract:
The transition to Commander-centric network-enabled Command and Control
(C2) is well underway within the US Army and Department of Defense (DOD).
The foundation of this approach is an information superiority-enabled
concept of operations that describes the way U.S. forces organize and fight
in the information age. The idea is to translate this information
superiority into combat power by effectively linking friendly forces within
the Battlespace, providing a much richer shared awareness of the situation,
and enabling more rapid and effective decision making. In order to achieve
this type of capability, reliable connectivity must be established among the
various types of digitized C2 systems, sensor systems, communications
systems, and communications networks. This, however, will only provide half
of the required solution. Just as important as connectivity is to this
concept is the ability of these systems to discover, consume, understand,
and act upon this mission-relevant shared information. This requires that
interoperability specifications and standards be established to facilitate
shared information understanding among the services, their warfighter
domains, and the plethora of disparate digitized systems and networks that
constitute the current battlefield.
One such area of applicable research involves the integration of geospatial
analysis with Army planning and decision making. The purpose of this paper
is describe work focused on bringing tailored, actionable geospatial
information into the hands of the warfighter using the Joint Consultation,
Command and Control Information Exchange Data Model (JC3IEDM). The U.S. Army
Topographic Engineering Center (TEC) is sponsoring an ongoing effort to
develop products and a framework for transforming the volumes of data
produced by terrain teams and sensors into information products and tactical
decision aids to provide a deeper understanding of the battlefield and
including terrain and weather effects. As part of this work a common
underlying data representation has been developed and demonstrated as a
means of harnessing the analytical power of Geographic Information Systems
(GIS) and presenting this information to the Warfighter in terms that he can
more easily apply to the battle command process. The paper will provide a
description of this underlying geospatially enabled C2 representation.
