Topic 10: Collaborative Technologies for Network-Centric Operations

The change in the use of military from traditional missions to peace-keeping and restoring societies, changes the way that doctrine, methods and procedures are developed and employed. Today a 21st century military mission involves participants from numerous countries spanning a variety of organizations (military, civil, public, governmental, NGO, private) which all need to collaborate and coordinate at multiple levels on Collective Endeavors. The shift is to allow subordinates initiative to a larger amount than before and enable new C2 processes, such as self synchronization The uncertainty inherent in an actual mission, and the variety of potential organizations that support the mission after it is underway, makes Command Intent (CI) a critical concept for the mission team. Both humans and computerized decision support services need to have the ability to communicate and interpret a shared CI. The Operations Intent and Effects Model identify the relationships between Intent, Actions, and Effects in a decision support model. We describe this model and show how it can represent and support a wide variety of traditional and innovative military doctrine including collaboration in collective endeavors.