A Mission-Driven C2 Framework for Enabling Heterogeneous Collaboration

Abstract

The deployment of naval vessels requires much specialised knowledge. Firstly, about the mission: what goals have to be reached (the command-aim), and what has to be done to achieve this aim? Secondly, about the situation: how can sufficient information about the situation be gathered to determine whether the planned tasks can still be executed successfully? Thirdly, about the available systems and operators: what are their capabilities and capacities, and how can these be utilised to their full extent? This knowledge is also required to determine the consequences of system failure or the non-availability of human resources. This chapter models these categories, constructs relationships between them and uses them to answer the aforementioned questions. This is done in two phases. First, a formal model is described that translates the command aim into operational tasks, determines which resources are the most suitable to execute these tasks, and determines which alternative resources are available. The model can also be used to reason about the viability of the command-aim, should certain resources become unavailable. Second, the viability of this model is investigated by implementing an executable prototype using highly portable declarative programming techniques. The model and the implementation can be used to experiment with how ship design decisions can have operational consequences on the systems and the command aim, both at design time and during operational use. To determine whether they are generally applicable, it was tested in a realistic scenario involving a potential terrorist threat on a drilling rig in the North Sea and in a damage control operation.