A systems engineering approach to M&S standards development: Application to the Coalition Battle Management Language

Presented at the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) SIW Conference for 2013; includes supplementary materialThe development of interoperability standards can facilitate communication among information systems by defining a common way to exchange information. These standards are in fact comprised of normative and informative products that typically specify the details and examples that enable heterogeneous systems produced by different organizations to be integrated successfully and then to interoperate, as per system requirements. Identifying and managing such requirements is a key element to building successful standards – those that ultimately are adopted, utilized and meet stakeholder expectations. The systems engineering approach is grounded in the world of requirements and can be applied to M&S interoperability standards development in order to ensure that these standards are indeed successful. The first part of this paper considers some cases where systems engineering principles have been applied to technical standards. The second part then illustrates how this approach is being applied to the development of the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) Coalition Battle Management Language Phase 2 Products with significant contributions from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Modeling and Simulation Group 085 (MSG-085): Standardization for C2-Simulation Interoperation

A Proposed Engineering Process and Prototype Toolset for Developing C2-to-Simulation Interoperability Solutions

The Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) is an open standard being developed for the exchange of digitized military information among command and control (C2), simulation and autonomous systems by the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO). As the first phase of the C-BML standard nears its release, the Phase 2 Drafting Group (DG) has proposed a framework to identify and track the concerns and requirements to be addressed in the next major C-BML standard release. Following this proposition, the NATO Modeling and Simulation Group 085 started an activity to put into place a prototype engineering process for the development and maintenance of a unified C2-SIMulation (C2SIM) Scenario INitialization and EXecution (SINEX) Model. As part of this activity, the group also developed a draft C2SIM Distributed Simulation Engineering and Execution Process (DSEEP) Overlay for the development of federations comprised of simulation and C2 systems. The current paper reports on these activities and also provides recommendations for the integration of the SINEX Process as part of a unified C2SIM interoperability standard that will include the alignment and convergence between the Military Scenario Definition Language (MSDL) and C-BML

NATO MSG-048 Coalition Battle Management Initial Demonstration Lessons Learned and Way Forward

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 modeling and simulation. In its May, 2007 meeting, MSG-048 decided to undertake as its first technical project a multinational demonstration, using the US Joint Battle Management Language (JBML) phase 1 prototype Web services as central infrastructure. The demonstration was presented at the I/ITSEC'07 and consisted of three different operational national C2 systems interoperating with three different national simulations, supported by the JBML Web services and an open source C2 visualizer from the US, and the C2 Lexical GUI from Germany. In all, eight software systems from six nations successfully interoperated. This capability was achieved in only six months, based on use of an Internet Reference Implementation that all parties could use to test from their home laboratories, along with a high level of cooperation among technical personnel and military subject matter experts from all participating nations. This paper will provide an overview of the interoperation technology and component systems used in the MSG-048 initial demonstration, describe the lessons learned in the process of creating the demonstration, and summarize the way ahead for the work of MSG-048, including its support for validation of the products of SISO's C-BML Product Group

Adding reports to coalition battle management language for NATO MSG-048

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 modeling and simulation. Its initial work in defining and demonstrating a basic capability for this purpose has been reported in previous Euro-SIW papers. This paper addresses Phase 2 of the Technical Activity which expanded the BML paradigm by adding C2 Reports, enabling two-way flow of information between C2 and simulation systems. The new capability was demonstrated at the InterService/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2008. The demonstration configuration combined three national C2 systems and three national simulations along with middleware from two other nations. The result was a generic C2- simulation linkage with no humans in the information exchange loop. This was achieved in only four months, using a network-enabled development approach with an Internet Reference Implementation combined with a powerful development environment based on a C2 Lexical Grammar graphical user interface for inspection of the exchanged information, plus a scripted approach for rapid development of expanded BML Web services. This paper provides a description of the BML Reports and the enhanced development methodology to support expansion of the BML concept in general and the work of the SISO C-BML Product Development Group in particular. We conclude with a projection of the work of MSG-048 in 2009, which focuses on operational validation of the C-BML concept