Tactical Edge Characterization Framework: Volume 3 Evolution and Application of the Framework

The views, opinions and/or findings contained in this report are those of The MITRE Corporation and should not be construed as an official Government position, policy, or decision, unless designated by other documentation. Executive Summary Many approaches commonly used to develop a Service-Oriented Environment (SOE) presume the availability of reliable, consistently available networks that provide significant bandwidth and little to no latency. Since this is often not the case across the Department of Defense's (DoD) networks, the current development methods might not provide reliable capability to users in a Tactical Edge (TE) environment. 1 This Enterprise Systems Engineering (ESE) Capstone activity aims to ensure the viability of a SOE to a broader domain of tactical users by gaining a better understanding of the TE and quantifying its characteristics. During Fiscal Year (FY) 2007, the ESE Capstone activity developed a Tactical Edge Framework (TEF). The primary objectives of the TEF are 1) to provide a classification of disadvantaged users (i.e., users operating in a TE environment), and 2) to provide a common vocabulary to characterize TE environments. The common vocabulary allows the TE characteristics to be quantified and solutions to be identified to explicitly address the quantified characteristics. As the DoD's components deliver services to the TE, the TEF's common vocabulary and use of consistent solutions will promote interoperability across component-specific implementations. The TEF was documented in two papers; " Common Vocabulary for Tactical Environments " , which defines a common vocabulary that identifies classes of disadvantaged users at the TE and characterizes their environments as a set of constraints [2], and " Design Patterns for Tactical Environments, " , which describes a set of repeatable solutions (i.e., design patterns) to mitigate the common TE constraints [3]. The focus of the FY 2008 activity was to socialize the TEF and facilitate its transition to the DoD. The socialization of the TEF across the DoD's components and the component's commands resulted in the validation and evolution of the TEF. The TEF's evolution included incorporating Central Command's (CENTCOM) characterization of the tactical edge into the TEF, as described by the " Disadvantaged User " white paper, and tailoring the TEF to better incorporate the DoD's component-specific perspectives of the TE. Furthermore, the common vocabulary from the TEF was aligned with authoritative definitions of terms from joint publications based on work completed by the Core Enterprise Services to the Tactical Edge (CESTE) Focus Group. …