11TH ICCRTS COALITION COMMAND AND CONTROL IN THE NETWORKED ERA Systematic Adaptation to Network Resource Constraints in Coalition C2 Environments

Tactical environments exhibit the scarcest communication resources of any military setting. However, emerging C2 systems utilize data services demanding significantly higher bandwidth and lower latency from tactical networks than ever before. The heterogeneous nature of C2 systems and data services within coalition environments raises the level of complexity even further. This paper takes a systems approach to adaptive network resource management, focusing on techniques that enable application networks to regulate themselves according to available connectivity and cooperative prioritization of data services. Services that would fail under connectivity constraints in traditional networks are able in this model to degrade gracefully while maintaining usable levels of functionality. Schemas for both mandated and cooperative data prioritization are discussed. The example of the USSOCOM-NPS Field Experimentation Program is used to illustrate the range of potential applications of this technique to coalition C2 operations.