Expeditionary Decision Support System (EDSS) and its application to Information Superiority/Information Operations

The ability to execute true distributed and collaborative planning for amphibious operations, including ship-to-objective maneuver, selected intelligence and meteorological functions, and plan rehearsal is critical in the fast moving littoral/expeditionary warfare area. As part of an ongoing series of newly developed Tactical Decision Aids (TDA) for the Global Command and Control System – Maritime (GCCS-M), the Office of Naval Research has sponsored the development of an expeditionary warfare planning segment for GCCS-M. This TDA incorporates operating features of and shares a common database with the existing GCCS-M Mine Warfare Environmental Decision Aids Library (MEDAL) segment, known officially as MCMSEG, allowing extensive data sharing between mine warfare and amphibious warfare planners. It is currently under experimental fleet use by deploying US Amphibious Ready Groups (ARG) and their staffs. It has been tested during a recent NATO exercise involving multi-national Amphibious Groups. It is currently deployed on a majority of the US amphibious ships involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Its employment and operational use are discussed in this paper.