Network Centric Warfare Concepts in the Royal Netherlands Army C2 Architecture

The Royal Netherlands Army (RNLA) has been working on its second generation C2 Information System since 2000. Its first generation Integrated Staff Information System (ISIS) that is currently deployed is based on ATCCIS specifications and uses the ATCCIS Replication Mechanism for database to database replication. For the next generation system, the C2 Workstation, the goal was to incorporate NCW/NCO concepts in its architecture. This was translated into the requirement for a scaleable and robust Distributed Information Exchange Architecture that makes maximum use of COTS technology and runs on top of the IP based RNLA network Infrastructure TITAAN (Theatre Independent Tactical Army and Air force Network). Implementation of the new architecture is on track for an initial fielding by Q1 2004. In this paper, several key characteristics of the C2WS architecture are described divided into four architectural layers: the Operational Layer, the Data Replication Layer, the Middleware Layer and the IP (Multicast) Layer. The RNLA has developed a custom object database and database replication mechanism that is expected to scale to 10.000 or more databases and allows selective distribution and concurrent manipulation of data. The replication mechanism runs on top of a COTS Publish/Subscribe messaging middleware product. The middleware makes use of a reliable IP multicast protocol to allow efficient point-to-multipoint communication. Our conclusion is that the C2WS architecture meets many of the goals of Network Centric Operations. In the realisation of our architecture, we have identified several areas where COTS technology imposes limitations, for example in the area of security in Publish/Subscribe based communication and achieving fine grained selectivity of data distribution down to the IP-level. At the end of this paper we give an overview of technologies that we are evaluating to address these limitation.