Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) Study Group Final Report

Interoperability across Modeling and Simulation (M&S) and Command and Control (C2) systems continues to be a significant problem for today\u27s warfighters. M&S is well-established in military training, but it can be a valuable asset for planning and mission rehearsal if M&S and C2 systems were able to exchange information, plans, and orders more effectively. To better support the warfighter with M&S based capabilities, an open standards-based framework is needed that establishes operational and technical coherence between C2 and M&S systems

OVERVIEW

Battle Management Language (BML) is an unambiguous language used to command and control forces and equipment conducting military operations and provide for situational awareness and a shared, common operational picture. BML is being developed as a standard representation of a “digitised commander’s intent ” to be used for real troops, for simulated troops, and for future robotic forces. BML is particularly relevant in a network centric environment for enabling mutual understanding. Within the USA, a prototypical implementation of a Battle Management Language was developed and demonstrated in Spring 2003 using the OneSAF Testbed (OTB) Simulation and a future Army planning system, the Combined Arms Planning and Execution System (CAPES). The US Army BML prototype was used in the UK to analyse the applicability of these concepts to UK doctrine. A French Army BML has also been prototypically implemented in France, within the APLET R&T Program, independently from – but well aware of – the US prototype. Three views are necessary to describe BML completely: • A Doctrine View – BML must be aligned to doctrine. The vocabulary used to unambiguously generate executable tasks at the end of the process must be well defined in the context of the respective application domain. • A Representation View – BML must model these aspects in a way that underlying Informatio