Biblio

This paper reviews the definitions and characteristics of military effects, the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT), and their impact on decision processes in a Multi-Domain Operating environment (MDO). The aspects of contemporary military decision-processes are illustrated and an MDO Effect Loop decision process is introduced. We examine the concept of IoBT effects and their implications in MDO. These implications suggest that when considering the concept of MDO, as a doctrine, the technological advances of IoBTs empower enhancements in decision frameworks and increase the viability of novel operational approaches and options for military effects.

In military operations, Commander's Intent describes the desired end state and purpose of the operation, expressed in a concise and clear manner. Command by intent is a paradigm that empowers subordinate units to exercise measured initiative to meet mission goals and accept prudent risk within commander's intent. It improves agility of military operations by allowing exploitation of local opportunities without an explicit directive from the commander to do so. This paper discusses what the paradigm entails in terms of architectural decisions for data fusion systems tasked with real-time information collection to satisfy operational mission goals. In our system, information needs of decisions are expressed at a high level, and shared among relevant nodes. The selected nodes, then, jointly operate to meet mission information needs by forwarding and caching relevant data without explicit directives regarding the objects to fetch and sources to contact. A preliminary evaluation of the system is presented using a target tracking application, set in the context of a NATO-based mission scenario, called Anglova. Evaluation results show that delegating some decision authority to the data fusion system (in terms of objects to fetch and sources to contact) allows it to save more network resources, while also increasing mission success rate. The system is therefore particularly well-suited to operation in partially denied or contested environments, where resource bottlenecks caused by adversarial activity impair one's ability to collect real-time information for mission-critical decision making.

The Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) might be one of the most expensive cyber-physical systems of the next decade, yet much research remains to develop its fundamental enablers. A challenge that distinguishes the IoBT from its civilian counterparts is resilience to a much larger spectrum of threats.