representing commander's intent for machine …€¦ · web viewthe word interoperability has...

13th ICCRTS: C2 for Complex Endeavors

“Machine Interpretable Representation of Commander's Intent"”

Topic 9: Collaborative Technologies for Network-Centric Operations

Topic 3: Modeling and Simulation

Topic 8: C2 Architectures

Per M. Gustavsson (Saab) STUDENT

Michael Hieb (George Mason University)

Lars Niklasson (University of Skövde)

Point of Contact:

Per M. Gustavsson

Saab

Training Systems and Information Fusion, Storgatan 20, SE-54136, Skövde, SWEDEN

+46 31 794 89 39

[email protected]


Machine Interpretable Representation of Commander's Intent

Abstract

The Network-centric approach envisioned in the Global Information Grid enable systems to be interconnected in a dynamic flexible architecture to support multi-lateral, civilian and military missions. The constantly changing environment requires the commanders to plan for missions that allow for teams from various nations, agencies etc. to join or separate from the team, depending on the situation, as the mission unfolds. The uncertainty within an actual mission and the variety of potential agencies and organizations to support the mission after it is underway calls for Commander’s Intent to be available for fast unambiguous interpretation and understanding by all participants both humans and machines. Commander’s Intent representation need to be able to express the situation of own and others organization together with the anticipated end-state of the mission and key targets.

This paper presents a representation that captures Commander’s Intent to such degree that it unambiguously can be communicated and automatically processed by machine in an agile planning and war-gamming simulation framework.

Keywords: Commander’s Intent, Battle Management Language

Introduction

Outline of this paper is Introduction followed by Commander’s Intent that describes the purpose and structure of Commander’s Intent. Interoperability addresses the need for higher representation of information and describes the Battle Management Language as one way of representing orders and reports unambiguously. In Representing Commander’s Intent a model and formalism is described. In Implementation an example is provided for the usage of the proposed representation technique. The paper ends with conclusion and addressing future work in how an implementation in a Computer Generated Force could be made.

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Commander’s Intent (Background)

From military doctrine1 Commander’s Intent is as a base for staffs and subordinates to develop plans and orders that transform thought to action. In the US Army Field Manual (US Army, 2003) Commander’s Intent is defined as below:

The commander’s intent is a clear, concise statement of what the force must do and the conditions the force must meet to succeed with respect to the enemy, terrain, and desired end state. It focuses on achieving the desired end state and is nested with the commander’s intent of the commander two levels up. Commanders formulate and communicate their commander’s intent to describe the boundaries within which subordinates may exercise initiative while maintaining unity of effort. To avoid limiting subordinates’ freedom of action, commanders place only minimum constraints for coordination on them.

The Commander’s Intent can then be viewed as the output from the commander’s decision making process. In his profound theory of warfare Boyd (Boyd, 1987, Boyd, 1996, Richards, 2001) describes the essential parts to achieve mastery over an adversary by introducing a human behavioral cycle of decision making, i.e. the OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) loop model. Boyd pinpoints that it is required to have a decision process that not only is faster than the adversary’s, but also provides a commander with assessments methods of his own and his adversary’s strengths, weaknesses, abilities and capabilities in the on-going situation. Thus, awareness is reached and each of the decisions made, together with the executed actions, moves the adversary towards the commander’s desired goal. Boyd describes this ability as what a commander needs to get inside the adversary’s moral-mental-time cycle to achieve decision advantage. In the Joint Vision 2020 by (Joint Chief of Staff, 2000) this ability is termed Decision Superiority:

Decision Superiority – better decisions arrived at and implemented faster than an opponent can react, or in a non-combatant situation, at a tempo that allows the force to shape the situation or react to changes and accomplish its mission.

In this definition mission is no longer purely military and the multi-national force consists of civil, military, non-governmental and private organizations and agencies that operate in the political, economic, military, social, information and intelligence arenas. The actions to shape the situation cause effects to occur in arenas that not only affect the subject of the action but also anyone who can observe it. The observers will interpret the information and form situation awareness that is used in the decision making process.

1 Doctrine is the collected knowledge about an organization and gives advice on how to solve the tasks at hand (Ahlgren, 2002) Doctrine can be prescriptive, describing rules and methods, or descriptive, theoretical in (Suzic, 2005) page 5.

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Implementation of the decisions then causes effects and that starts a new turn in the OODA-loop. The commander will observe (perceive) and observe (interpreter, comprehend) the effects differently because of sensing ability, domain knowledge and previous experience resulting in decisions (projection, intent) that leads to actions and effects that may or may not help to shape the situation further and accomplish the mission. With coordination of actions to establish effects in the right arenas at the right time to move towards a desired end-state is the core of Effect Based Operations. In the book by (Smith, 2003), it is defined as follows:

Effect-based operations are coordinated sets of actions directed at shaping the behavior of friends, neutrals, and foes in peace, crisis and war. (Smith, 2003) page 108.

Effect based operations are not new since good commanders and political leaders have been using political, economic, military, social, information and intelligence to shape the behavior of friends and foes for centuries. The new Effect Based Operations approach combines the strategic, operational and tactical objectives to be attained together with how network-centric and effect based operations help to realize those objectives. Network Centric Warfare has been driven by the technological advances in collecting, processing and disseminate information, that has made it possible to enhance information sharing and collaboration on tasks in command and control systems. The new technology combined with organizational and doctrinal adoption, changes the conditions for collaboration between systems and individuals. Effect based Operations shifts the focus from weapons and targets towards focused actions to shape the behavior of enemies and allies. Traditionally effect in military terms are often interpreted as the impact of destruction. However a broader definition is provided by (Smith, 2003) in Effect Based Operations where

“An effect is a result or impact created by the application of military or other power”.

The effect and actions to accommodate the ideas are described in plans, which from a traditional military planning process is a detailed expression of the explicit actions and to some extent the desired effects. A plan from a Networked-centric planning process focuses on describing the Commander’s Intent so that flexibility in coordination and collaboration in the dynamic environment are entailed (Alberts and Hayes, 2007).

The commander’s intent links the mission and concept of operations. It describes the end state and key tasks that, along with the mission, are the basis for subordinates’ initiative. Commanders may also use the commander’s intent to explain a broader purpose beyond that of the mission statement. The mission and

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the commander’s intent must be understood two echelons down. (US Army, 2003)section 4-27

The Commander’s Intent is divided into the explicit awareness or perception of Commander’s Intent and the implicit or internal expectation of Commander’s Intent. The Explicit Commander’s Intent is the publicly stated description of; the end-sate on the battlefield as it relates to forces (entities, people) and terrain; the purpose of operation; key tasks to accomplish and the commander’s situation awareness about the own forces, the adversary’s strength and weaknesses. The Implicit Commander’s Intent contains the style, ethics, and norms by the commander (Pigeau and McCann, 2000) and agreed concepts, policies, laws doctrine formed by military, civil, organizations, agencies, nations and coalitions. Furthermore there is a close connection between Commander’s Intent and Shared Situation Awareness, which is the collaborative comprehension of the situation, since commanders and staff need to perceive (Explicit Intent), comprehend (Implicit Intent) and project (the anticipated future and end-state) to be able to generate effective plans together (Farrell, 2004).

Even though processing, e.g. data mining, filtering, aggregation and fusion techniques, of information has evolved; it has not been able to keep up with the pace of collection and dissemination. The collection and dissemination of information enables, literally anyone to share information. Although that information can be shared in joint, civil-military, multi-lateral, peacekeeping, information, security and multi-agency operations, it does not imply that the receiver can interpret (perceived and comprehend) the information and make use of it in decision making which to extreme might lead to that the adversary is in control and gets within the commanders moral-mental-time cycle.

The exchangeable information must then be as clear as possible, without ambiguity, and understandable. Clear means that the information expressions are concise and conforms to agreed doctrine, procedures and methods. Without ambiguity means that there is an explicit structure that the information can be put into and then parsed out of with only one clear and definite outcome results from the parsing. Understandable means that the semantics used in the information are available and common to all of the recipients.

Commander’s Intent and Shared Situation Awareness are prerequisites for Effect Based Operations and Decision Superiority in a networked-centric environment. Commander’s Intent then need to be as clear as possible, without ambiguity, and understandable (Hieb and Scahde, 2007).

The planning and order methodology and process used by NATO, US and Sweden is based on the 5 paragraph order structure. In a 5 paragraph order the whole mission and all its details are provided. In several of the paragraphs Intent is present and one paragraph

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has Intent as its name. (Author comment for full paper, picture of 5-paragraph order and highlight Intent parts and elaborate the text)

Interoperability

This section describes the need of higher representation form of commander’s intent, semantic interoperability and ends in the grammar work by Hieb and Scahde in the Battle Management Language domain.

The word interoperability has many interpretations. In the book “Interoperability in Multinational Operations”2 (Sjöblom, 2004) a walk through interoperability in Sweden, NATO and US is presented. In short, the Swedish focus is on international interoperability and the split-up into physical and logical interoperability. Physical refers to the equipment, systems and IT-systems. Logical refers to concepts, terms, rules, methods, protocols and message formats. The NATO view of interoperability is the ability to operate in synergy in the execution of assigned tasks by compatibility, interchangeability, commonality, common user item, force interoperability, military interoperability and standardization (AAP-6, 2007). In the Joint Vision 2020 (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2000) interoperability is said to be “…the foundation of effective joint, multinational, and interagency operations … especially in terms of communications, common logistics items, and information sharing.” Also in the Joint Vision 2020 the focus is not only technical “Although technical interoperability is essential, it is not sufficient to ensure effective operations. There must be a suitable focus on procedural and organizational elements, and decision makers at all levels must understand each other’s capabilities and constraints.”

To deal with the various levels of interoperability the Layers of Coalition Interoperability (LCI) (Tolk, 2003), (Figure 1), is used to describe and establish a model for the interoperability needs between systems.

2 Interoperability in Multinational Operation is the translation of the Swedish title “Interoperabilitet i mutinationella operationer”

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Figure 1 - Layers of Coalition Interoperability

The LCI is a complementary model to the “Level of Information Systems Interoperability” model (LISI) and the NATO C3 Technical Architecture (NC3TA) Reference Model for Interoperability (NMI). The lower levels deal with the layers of technical interoperability, i.e., the ability to collect, manipulate, distribute, and disseminate data and information. Knowledge and Awareness addresses Common Operational Picture, harmonized views of operation, i.e. the intersection between the organizational and technical view. The higher levels deal with tactics, data and knowledge bases, the coalition partner’s processes and on the top are the political values and objectives of the coalition.

The Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model (LCIM) (Tolk and Muguira, 2003, Turnitsa, 2005) focuses on Information, i.e. Data, Information and Knowledge in the LCI model (Figure 2). In the description of the model the requirements to fulfill a level is expressed together with examples of current implementations.

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Figure 2 - Level of Conceptual Interoperability

The overall characteristics of the LCIM are presented since the model specifies that to reach a flexible and agile interoperability level we need to build the appropriate mechanisms on each level in the model.

(Author comment: Then some descriptions)

The mechanism of exchanging of data is from a technological view the most significant issue, however from an information view a top down approach to capture the actual usage of information, business rules and the participating systems are essential. Such top-down analysis need to be captured and described in some conceptual model, so that data, information and the usage of the information is described, i.e. the higher levels of the LCIM model (Turnitsa, 2005). In the later work by Tolk and Turnitsa they present ideas in how the usage of an ontological framework may allow systems to exchange information based on self-organizing principles using what they can exchange and not on mandated specifications of what they should exchange (Tolk and Turnitsa, 2007).

Common Reference Models

How are plans and orders represented and especially Commander’s Intent?

Starting with Commander’s Intent there is no structured semantic information model, the closest is the usage of templates and XML-schemas. Still they are free text and ambiguous. (elaborate)

To formalize a representation some kind of vocabulary, taxonomy is needed. Bellow three Common Reference Models are presented in brief.

MIP JC3IEDM: Multilateral Interoperability Program (MIP) has developed the Joint Consultation, Command and Control Information Exchange Data Model (JC3IEDM) that provides interoperability at level 2 according to LCIM.

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Civilian IEDM: Civilian ongoing standardization efforts to produce a similar product as the JC3IEDM but more lightweight. The authors recognize the effort to deliver interoperability at LCIM level 2.

BML IEM: Battle Management Language (BML) Information Exchange Model is intended to deliver interoperability according to LCIM. At level 3 and 4.

MIP - JC3IEDM

The JC3IEDM is an internationally developed and maintained data model which allows for the exchange and storage of command and control information. JC3IEDM divides up the data describing an object into static, type-oriented data (OBJECT_TYPE in JC3IEDM). Likewise, the model captures the data concerning single instances of an object, such as a particular unit, or an individual vehicle or soldier (OBJECT_ITEM. in JC3IEDM). For information exchange this is extremely useful, as it allows for single transfer between systems of the static data and intelligent linking for efficient transfer of the instance data as required.

Civilian Information Exchange Data Models

In the civilian domain three main initiatives to establish information exchange data models are present.

OASIS-Open CAP and EDXL: The OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) has developed the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), which have the purpose to be a simple but general format for exchanging all hazard emergency alerts and public warnings over various types of networks. The CAP is using XML and consists of four segments: alert that contains the purpose, source and status of the message; info that describes the category and textual description of an event together with information of its urgency (time available to prepare), severity (intensity of impact) and certainty (confidence in the observation or prediction); resource segment could be an image or audio file; and area that describes a geographic area connected with the info segment. The EDXL is intended to be used at any time (including preparedness and recovery) for asking for a specific resource or a more general “capability”, and for answering such a request.

CEN WS/ISDEM TSO: Within the work of OASIS-FP6 (not the same as OASIS-Open) there is a standardization process going on to identify a Tactical Situation Object (TSO) that will enable exchange of information. The TSO is one of the cornerstones of the OASIS-FP6 project. The TSO provides the capability to exchange pieces of information which participate to the Common Operational Picture, but it is not intended to provide all detailed information. So it reflects some choices for trying to have it as simple as possible while being relatively complete.

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Societal Security ISO TC/223: The ISO/TC 223 focus is on methods and tools for interoperable information flow, information models and shared situational awareness for all key phases of crisis management. The ISO/TC 223 have the CEN WS/ISDEM TSO output as its foundation.

Battle Management Language

Description of how the Battle Management Language is built and its promises. Using IICRTS-06 and CCRP-07 papers together with SISO papers.

The Battle Management Language (BML) was formally defined in (Hieb et al., 2001) as “…the unambiguous language used to command and control forces and equipment conducting military operations and to provide for situational awareness and a shared, common operational picture”. (Figure 3)

C2 System C2 System

SimulationSystem

RoboticSystem

BML tasking:Command and ControlForces and Equipment

BML reporting:Provide forSituational Awareness

Figure 3 - BML Tasking and Reporting

Using BML, it should be possible for C4I systems, simulation systems, and emerging robotic forces to communicate unambiguously with any of these other types of systems. Such system-to-system communication is demanding enough when it involves systems within the same organization. It grows even more complex and demanding incorporating other organizations and nations.

Guiding Principles of BML

There are four guiding principles that must be followed in order for a BML implementation to function correctly. (1) BML must be unambiguous; (2) BML must not constrain the full expression of the commander’s intent; (3) BML must use existing C4ISR data representations when possible; (4) BML must allow any elements (that is, some live, constructive, or robotic entity) to communicate information pertaining to itself, its mission and its environment in order to create situational awareness and a shared,

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common operational picture across all elements. These principles are very difficult to simultaneously satisfy, as they conflict with one another to some extent. Many (if not most) systems that convey a commander’s intent do so by allowing free text comments to accompany a data transmission. In this way, natural language messages can be employed by the commander to express his ideas. The difficulty here, of course, is that natural language messages are very difficult to disambiguate, especially when relaying those messages to constructive or robotic forces for automated interpretation. To satisfy all of these requirements, a battle management language must be rich enough in structure to accommodate system interoperability for a complex domain. That richness is achieved by approaching the requirements from three perspectives:

Protocol: The protocol that is currently being adopted is the Extensible Markup Language (XML) together with Web Services. It is flexible and well understood, it is easily extensible to accommodate all data needs that might exist (numeric elements, text strings, database cells, and others), and its structure and reliance on simple ASCII characterization make it easy to adopt as a means for data interchange by nearly all systems and across many countries.

Representation: The third principle of BML requires that existing C4ISR data representations be used for data interchange. Clearly this is a problematic requirement, as the number of diverse systems, data elements and situations germane to C4ISR is very large. For international coalition exchange, the best option is the well-established JC3IEDM briefly described above.

Doctrine: To provide the ability to represent the commander’s intent and to accomplish all interoperability communications in an unambiguous manner, require the use of very clear language elements. In order to make BML operationally sound, those language elements need to align with the business rules of the military organization that is using the BML for communications. Those business rules are found within the published doctrine of military organizations.

Command and Control Grammar

From the initial work with BML grammar in (Schade and Hieb, 2006) they present tasking and reporting grammars and in the continued work (Hieb and Schade, 2007) they present a general approach to a Command and Control Grammar providing intention, report and task support. The basic structure is the usage of context-free grammar (CFG), the principal approach used in the field of computational linguistics for automatically processing sentences in a written or spoken language.

Starting with the 5Ws of the BML concept (Who, What, When, Where, Why), the initial work focuses on defining a tasking grammar to create basic phrases relative to the orders aspect of the C-BML grammar. In short the grammar is expressed in terms of an activity, spatial coordination, and temporal coordination. An example of the structure is:

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S A* Spatial_Coord* Temporal_Coord*A Verb Tasker Taskee (Affected|Action) Where Start-When (End-When) Why Label (Mod)*

Representing Commander’s Intent

In this section a model and formalism is described. The model is based on the 5 paragraph order structure, information that influences the decision maker and decision making process models such as OODA-Loop and Endlsey’s Dynamic Decision Making Model. The formalism uses the hieb/scahde Battle Management Language.

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Model

EMBED PowerPoint.Slide.8

Commander 2

Observe

Orient

Decide

Act

Commander 1

Observe

Orient

Decide

Act

Commander 3

Observe

Orient

Decide

Act

Commander 4

Observe

Orient

Decide

Act

Doctrine

StyleC1

StyleC2

StyleC3

StyleC4

WARNO,OPORD,FRAGO 1Situation

SAwOwn

SAwAdv

Mission Execution ServiceSupport

Commandand

SignalIntention 1

KeyPoints

ConOps


SAwOwn

SAwAdv


Commandand

SignalIntention 1,2

KeyPoints

ConOps


SAwOwn

SAwAdv


Commandand

SignalIntention 2,3

KeyPoints

ConOps


SAwOwn

SAwAdv


Commandand

SignalIntention 3,4

KeyPoints

ConOps

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Formalism

(Author comment: the BML representation and the coupling to the vocabulary)

Simple usage:

End-State Verb (Executer) (Affected|Action) (Where) When Label (Mod)*

Key-Points Verb (Executer) (Affected|Action) (Where) When Label (Mod)*

Effect Verb (Executer) Tasker (Affected|Action) Where When Certainty Label (Mod)*

Implementation

Presents a scenario and how a change in intent impacts the outcome of the situation and how this could be implemented in a Computer Generated Force system. The work so far with the implementation and lessons learned are presented. (author comment work in process)

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Traditional an order to attack, RoE but also the overall Intent is fostering not only how the mission is performed but also what actions that are taken and when, i.e. overriding the direct order but following the intent.

The test system

Flow: order and intent are sent from TVT (left) through BML (expanded) to either BattleTEK or other TVT. In the 2nd TVT that commander can interpreter and make

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decsions and start other actions and plans down the chain. The intent/orders sent to BattleTek are interpretered and executed.

So fort 2 of 79 order types are addressed, and more are added.

Conclusion

Ending remarks that the representation provided works to describe Commander’s Intent for the identified scenario types. Further that the model pinpoints information that need to present for a Computer Generated Force Model to use such as, Implicit Commander’s Intent (hat there is a need to capture the style of the commanders/forces), doctrine etc.

Further Work

Expand the representation to include even higher order representations, i.e. somewhat conformant to the Level of Coalition Interoperability model by Andreas Tolk.

Introducing more complexity and Non Governmental Organizations, for example using the representation presented in this paper together with the vocabulary provided in CEN WS/ISDEM.

Implementing the ideas in an Embedded Training system for Commanders.

References

TBD

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