Using Agents with Shared Mental Model to Support Network-Centric Warfare

The information age has given way to what many military experts are describing as the next major military advancement – Network Centric Warfare (NCW). At its core, NCW has as its objective the translation of information superiority to supreme combat power; providing unprecedented lethality, survivability, and situational awareness to battle commanders and battle staff. One of the challenges associated with effective NCW is the development of environments that provide accurate, relevant and timely information exchange to the right entities at the right time. Studies have shown that one of the keys to effective information exchange is the ability of teammates to anticipate the needs of other teammates and proactively take appropriate action. Outlined in this paper is an on-going research program between the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and Pennsylvania State University aimed at combating the battle command information exchange problem by combining the use of shared mental models with software agent technology.