Integrating National C2 and Simulation Systems for BML Experimentation

The NATO Modeling and Simulation Group Technical Activity 48 (MSG-048) was chartered in 2006 to investigate the potential of a Coalition Battle Management Language for multinational and NATO interoperation of command and control systems with simulation systems. The result of this work has been reported in previous SIW papers. This paper addresses Phase 3 of the Technical Activity, which validated the BML paradigm by interoperation of multiple C2 and simulation systems in experimental support of operational military users. The new capability was the basis for a week-long event at Manassas, Virginia in November 2009, which was supported by a previous collaborative integration using the Internet. The experimental configuration combined six national C2 systems and five national simulations along with middleware from two other nations, including an updated BML server that implements the publish/subscribe paradigm for BML and a C2 Lexical Grammar interface that was used by several nations. BML provided a common C2-simulation linkage without humans in the information exchange loop. This paper describes the integration of national C2 and simulation systems, along with the successes and lessons learned. The results support further development of the BML concept and should inform the work of the SISO C-BML Product Development Group. We conclude with a projection of the work of MSG-085, the successor to MSG-048, which will focus on operational and standardization issues.