Geospatially Enabling Battle Command

The paper analyzes and gives a new perspective on how Geospatial Technology can support Battle Command, and more specifically the integration of GIS technology with services architecture concepts. After some general background on desirability and feasibility, the paper will demonstrate how GIS might be used in a services-enabled battlefield. Finally some examples of systems that integrate these concepts for air, ground, and maritime operations will be highlighted. 1. Beyond the OODA Loop Battle Command is a critical aspect of C4I systems. It is the goes beyond the process of battlespace decision making to the leading of warfighters and units to successfully accomplish the mission. [1] Geospatial functions have long played an important role in battle command, but they typically have operated in an ancillary role—originally, simple provision of maps and images. Now many force components maintain specialized geospatial cells at multiple echelons to provide sophisticated geospatial analysis of threats, plans, and operations. [2] These geospatial capabilities are now being directly integrated in mainstream C2I applications in the command center. With the benefit of services oriented architectures, these can be made available across the operations and training communities. Moreover, these geospatial services are moving out of headquarters staffs, and powering operations at all echelons. The net result is better, faster, and even cheaper analysis and decisions, as old, independent, and sometimes incompatible systems are phased out. These pervasive geospatial services allow the Observe Orient Decide Act (OODA) loop to be improved. The OODA loop was a concept originated by Col John Boyd USAF and is an iterative process.[3] It can be speeded up, but it will be time late to some degree, and in practice it will fail to exploit intelligence and insight provided by personnel at multiple echelons. This older decision cycle can now be replaced with a more adaptive process, where observation, orientation, and options development are continuous, and can be used by commanders over the course of operations. Commanders will be better positioned to be proactive, instead of repairing or replacing pre-packed plans. 2. GIS in the Mainstream Enterprise GIS is fast becoming a mainstream enterprise technology in a wide variety of military, intelligence, civil, and commercial organizations. In this role, it delivers three fundamental capabilities: GIS is often associated with visualization, originally paper maps and images, and now powerful 2D and 3D digital maps and globes. We used to think of maps and images as sources of data, and then as a means to display the results of analysis and decisions. More are coming to understand that maps and globes are themselves an intuitive foundation for analysis and decision-support processes. GIS offers a framework for knowledge management. This might be limited to geospatial or imagery data, but the real power comes with using space and time to integrate other information. At least 80 percent of all information has some spatial or temporal reference, and there are ways to readily interpret and use this information to create an integrated knowledge environment. Third and least understood is the use of GIS to capture ―tradecraft‖, or the analysis, process, and workflow that underpins the operations of organizations and communities. GIS applications can link standard tools and data sets, but also can explicitly capture assumptions, biases, methodologies, and judgments about uncertainty. In this way, tradecraft can be tested, validated, shared, and used to teach. With the benefit of the right underlying architecture and infrastructure, these capabilities can be served to the larger enterprise, and in the process create what is sometimes called a common operating picture. When this works well, an enterprise GIS system feeds itself, providing more information, knowledge, and technique, in other words, a virtuous cycle. By way of example, the Army has developed a wide variety of products based on geospatial capabilities, and these have been incorporated into operational doctrine. These products are far more than standard maps and images. They embed a variety of sophisticated algorithms, and can be interrogated on demand and regenerated quickly to support operations. So increasingly, they can be called as services. 3. The Enablers of GIS Pervasiveness Three sets of reasons account for the substantial and rapid penetration of geospatial capabilities into mainstream battle command systems and operations. Some relate to advancing GIS technology, but much of the progress has been driven by core IT advance and the advent of the services architecture. 3.1. Core IT Advances The impact of core IT advances are well understood, but the benefits for geospatial applications have been especially significant [4]. Geospatial applications are relatively compute, storage, and network intensive. In the 1980s and 1990s many legacy mapping and imagery processing systems were created on a stand-alone basis, partly to deal with IT limitations. This reinforced the role of mapping and imagery as ancillary services. Core IT advances make it far easier to integrate new and legacy geospatial capabilities into the mainstream enterprise environment. 3.2. Services Oriented Architecture Advances The second big contributor is the advance in IT architectures, and especially the advent of web services and the Services Oriented Architecture, or SOA. SOA benefits are well understood-savings in application development time and cost of up to 70 percent; ready exploitation of legacy systems; incremental system migration; and rapid modification of products, services, and the enterprise community itself. In a word—agility. Among the many challenges is the need to carefully define the common mission or business ―service‖ that best serves a variety of interdependent needs. When this is done right, SOA become, as CIO magazine said, ―a map of the business expressed in technology.‖[5] A SOA-based enterprise GIS is best thought of in three tiers: A specialist authoring tier where personnel can publish data, analysis, maps, or any product, using a variety of client devices. A server tier where these products can be served to the larger enterprise, by applying common interface standards in a middleware infrastructure, such as an enterprise service bus. ESRI tends to highlight the common geospatial services, but note that using the ―open web services‖ approach any other capability can be integrated. And finally, a presentation tier where any client can view information products, and call for server-side processing. Among the many benefits of decoupling information, business logic and presentation is the increased flexibility of dealing with severe infrastructure constraints (such as bandwidth), certainly a vital consideration on the battlefield. 3.3. GIS Application Technologies The last of the enablers are the big advances in GIS application technology over last several years. [6] They include new 2D and 3D thin clients that can support headquarters and field operations, and broker powerful applications back on servers. There is powerful new server technology. GIS Servers provide a development framework to host virtually any application supported by desktop clients. Other enterprise-class servers are available for special applications, such as Real Time servers to incorporate temporal data and analysis, and Image Servers, to provide onthe-fly processing and delivery of imagery. The componentization of software into ̳Engines‘ permits developers to embed GIS component functionality in all other applications, something that is having a pronounced impact on battle management. The GIS industry has strongly embraced interoperability, including support for GIS and IT technical standards, the ability to interoperate with desk-top clients provided by other companies, and the ability to access virtually any DBMS. And GIS technology supports distributed data management, which means data replication and reconciliation services, enforcement of access controls, and support for change-only updates, essential in a bandwidth constrained environment. Taken together, the GIS industry is fast moving from being a provider of discrete products to a provider of an integrated enterprise product platform. This means that large, diverse, and extended enterprise requirements can be satisfied. 4. CJMTK – An Illustration of GIS