Battle Management Language: Proof of Principle and Future Developments

The NATO Modeling and Simulation Group Technical Activity 048 (MSG-048) was chartered in 2006 to
investigate the potential of a Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) for Multinational and NATO
interoperation of command and control systems with Modeling and Simulation. At 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) Web services as the central infrastructure. The JBML Web services were
developed for land, air and maritime operations. The MSG-048 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. In all, eight software systems from five nations successfully interoperated on
a complex Land Coalition scenario at the Brigade level. In ‘08 work was done to take this a step further and work
towards an experiment involving military personnel using real C2 systems and simulators to support the military
planning process. The systems used in the ’07 demonstration were upgraded and new systems were added to present
a realistic decision support environment to the operators. The initial results will be demonstrated at the I/ITSEC’08.
This paper will provide an overview of the lessons learned from the ’07 demonstration, the work done in ‘08 to be
able to use the systems and a view towards the future of C2 – Simulation coupling using Battle Management
Language. The MSG-048 results will be fed back to the SISO C-BML PDG.