Exploitation of web technologies for the Joint Battlespace Infosphere

摘要

Today's military command and control (C2) systems provide much information to today's combatants, but because these legacy systems are disjointed, there exists an overload of poorly organized and incomplete data during operations. These systems tend to be "stovepiped," inflexible, difficult to integrate, and bard to use in building a common operational picture. The information exchange model for DoD C2 systems is migrating away from dedicated point-to-point and broadcast systems (information push) toward a model based partly on Internet and World Wide Web technologies (publish and subscribe). The USAF Scientific Advisory Board has created a visionary combat information management concept called the Joint Battlespace Infosphere in response to this movement. The purpose of this thesis is to identify and evaluate emerging Internet/Web-based technologies that could be employed by the DoD to improve upon existing information exchange services. This survey will examine the strengths and weaknesses of technologies such as client-server architectures, search engines, middleware, intelligent software agents, and multicast delivery tools that could enhance the development of the Joint Battlespace Infosphere.