1 Simulation - based Command and Control Applications in a Service - Oriented , Cloud Computing Environment

Modeling and Simulation (M&S) technologies have matured suitably to provide real time tactical utility to warfighting Command and Control (C2) computer system users, but C2 systems adoption of M&S in their native applications has been slow for design, acceptance, computing and procurement reasons. While extensive work has been done with simulation based planning, execution monitoring, logistics, visualization, data fusion, intelligence analysis, training, and hazard prediction these simulationbased applications generally have at best been linked to C2 systems, and usually exist as standalone systems. This separation from active C2 system databases and networks has kept them out of the tactical, time sensitive environment. Another consideration is the lack of locally available computing power in the austere tactical environment. The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in the U. S. Global Information Grid (GIG) and can breathe new life into these C2 oriented simulation-based applications as they are reconfigured as service-based C2 Community of Interest (COI) enterprise services. These SOA-based C2 capabilities would support common C2 tasks in C2 COI sub-domains such as: planning, hazard analysis, execution monitoring, course of action analysis, visualization and training. The enabling of more sophisticated C2 services and applications by a cloud-computing local tactical architecture is also discussed. This paper examines the command and control process, C2 system design and use, these classes of simulation-based applications, and details the process of configuring of that simulation-based tactical mission capability into a C2 service, integrated via common SOA enterprise services and infrastructure to the warfighter user. Some lessons learned from previous embedded and federated simulations with C2systems will be discussed, as well as commercial analogs of these proposed GIG capabilities in operation on the Internet today.