A novel ontological approach to semantic interoperability between legacy air defence command and control systems

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 UK National Audit Office (NAO), Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General HC 537 Session 2001–2002, 7 Feb. 2002, Ministry of Defence: The Joint Services Command and Staff College (London: TSO 2002) p.7. 2 Broadly 110 British Army, 75 RAF, 55 RN, 90 International and the rest made up of students from other UK government departments, including the MOD and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. 3 UK Ministry of Defence (MOD), British Military Doctrine 0‐01 (London: TSO 2001); Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre, Joint Doctrine Publication 01: Joint Operations (JDP 01) (Shrivenham, UK: JDDC 2004) p. 2‐1, para. 202. 4 This academic–military relationship to accredit the UK staff course predates the establishment of the JSCSC and began in 1992 at the RAF Staff College, Bracknell and it was extended in 1993 to the Army Staff College at Camberley and the Royal Naval College at Greenwich with a supplementary MA package. 5 MOD, Strategic Defence Review, Cm3999 (London: TSO 1998) p.10, para. 16. 6 MOD, Modernising Defence Training: Report of the Defence Training Review (London: Ministry of Defence 2001) p.3. 7 Ibid. pp. 3, 7 and 8. 8 Ibid. p.19. 9 Ibid. p.20. 10 Ibid. p.16. 11 Lt. Gen. Sir John Kiszley, 'Defence and the Universities in the Twenty‐first Century', Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Journal 149/3 (June 2004) p.37. 12 MOD, Report of the Defence Training Review (note 6) p.19. 13 For example, 'The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards', British Lt. Gen. Sir William Francis Butler (1838–1910), quoted in Volker Franke, Preparing for Peace: Military Identity, Value Orientations, and Professional Military Education (London: Praeger 1999) p.39. 14 MOD, Modernising Defence Training: Report of the Defence Training Review, Vol. 2 Supporting Essays, Supporting Essay Seven: Education for Defence (London: MOD 2001) p.36 quoting Professor Ian Angell of London School of Economics at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Conference, 26 Oct. 2000. 15 Air Vice‐Marshal Brian Burridge, 'Post‐Modern Military Education: Are We Meeting the Challenge?', Defence Studies 1/1 (Spring 2001) pp.xi–xii. 16 Leonard D. Holder and Williamson Murray, 'Prospects for Military Education', Joint Force Quarterly (Spring 1998) p.90. This kind of measurement of success was also found in the DTR report that 'Recent operational success has shown our training is of a very high standard', MOD, Report of the Defence Training Review (note 6) p.13. 17 In the UK, defence differentiates between training and education in the following way. Education is defined as 'Development of intellectual capacity, acquisition of supporting knowledge and inculcation of attitudes that underpin performance and engender understanding, commitment and ethos'; whereas training is defined as: 'Activity that aims to impart the specific knowledge and skills and/or inculcate appropriate attitudes required by an individual in order to perform adequately a task or job.', MOD, Director General Training and Education, Defence Systems Approach to Training (DSAT) Quality Standard (QS) 002:2003 (London: TSO 2003) pp.3 and 5. 18 Jeffrey D. McCausland and Gregg F. Martin, 'Transforming Strategic Leader Education for the 21st‐Century Army', Parameters 31/3 (Autumn 2001) p.27. 19 Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, Chair Dick Cheney, Project Director and Editor Bill Taylor, Professional Military Education: An Asset for Peace and Progress (Washington, DC: CSIS, March 1997) p.18. 20 Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press 2006) pp.18–19. The Five Minds are the disciplined mind, the synthesising mind, the creative mind, the respectful mind and the ethical mind. 21 Kiszley (note 11) p.35. 22 Gregory C. Kennedy and Keith Neilson (eds.), Military Education: Past, Present and Future (London: Praeger 2002) p.x. 23 Thomas A. Keaney, 'The War Colleges and Joint Education in the United States', in Kennedy and Neilson (note 22) p.150. 24 Kiszley (note 11) p.36. 25 Burridge (note 15) p.xv. 26 Kiszley (note 11) p. 36. 27 Richard Chilcoat, 'The Revolution in Military Education', Joint Force Quarterly (Summer 1999) p.60. 28 Kiszley (note 11) p.34. Drivers for change in education and training: 'SDR'; 'Shifting Social Trends' – Sandhurst entry 90 per cent graduates and 20 years ago was less than 40 per cent; RN 80 per cent; RM (Royal Marines) 95 per cent; and RAF 60 per cent, MOD, Report of the Defence Training Review (note 6) p.6. 29 MOD, Modernising Defence Training Vol. 2 (note 14) p.36. 30 At the JSCSC defence has made the investment of having a resident department of King's College London so that all students on the ACSC can apply to study for the parallel degree while studying for their staff course, thus obviating the need for officers selected onto the ACSC to take a year out to study for a postgraduate qualification at a university. 31 Eighty per cent of ACSC10 students had operational experience and 42 per cent combat experience. The average age of UK students has increased from 36 to 40. British Army students are now of Major and Lieutenant Colonel ranks, thus mirroring closer the age profile of RN and RAF than previous courses. Other government departments (OGD) are represented on the ACSC, but historically it has proved difficult to achieve representation of non‐Service or Civil Servants. OGD representation tends to be from the MOD and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. 32 International students are fully integrated into the ACSC. In view of the increasing demand of the course the International English Language Testing System entry standard was lifted to 7 for ACSC10. 33 A number of British Army officers who had attended ACSCs1–9 were invited to do the new course. 34 Historically between 250 and 290 students out of a student total of 320 apply to and are admitted on to the MA in Defence Studies. Even if students do not study for the parallel MA programme, all benefit from postgraduate education. 35 The review and subsequent rationalisation in the HLTOs was made possible by the removal of the Single Service Phases of ACSCs 1–9. The need to meet Single Service requirements and objectives was thus transferred to intermediate officer education and training. 36 The educational aims that focus the ACSC at the postgraduate (Masters) level are as follows: 'To develop the learner's knowledge and understanding of defence in the modern world. To demand critical engagement with current research and advanced scholarship on defence and its relationship with the fields of international relations, security studies, military history, war studies and operational experience. To encourage a systematic and reflective understanding of contemporary conflict and the issues that surrounds them. To promote initiative, originality, creativity and independence of thought in identifying, researching, judging and solving fundamental intellectual problems in this area of study. To develop relevant transferable skills, especially communication, use of information technology and organisation and management of the learning process.' The Operational Level professional focus of the ACSC has the following learning outcomes related to the examination of the implications and issues related to achieving success at the operational level. These include understanding the purpose, planning and conduct of operations, and the management of defence to provide and maintain capability for operations. The investment made through the course provides the opportunity to enhance the student's judgement and therefore the value of that individual's contribution to decisions that shape and support operations in all types of subsequent appointments. The educational aims that focus the ACSC at the operational level are as follows: 'To develop the learner's ability to evaluate the implications and issues for the operational level that arise from the strategic context and tactical realities. To develop the learner's ability to define the critical decisions required for success at the operational level. To encourage systematic and refctive understanding of the challenges and issues confronting commanders and leaders working at the operational level in order to promote personal and team Command & Leadership qualities. To enable analysis of operational level problems and the development of appropriate organisational, methodological and resource‐based solutions.' 37 For students to achieve pass staff course (joint) they are required to pass three tiers of assessment. There are five assessments for Tier 1: a 4,000‐word essay on Strategy and Policy, a 6,000‐word essay on Componency, a 15,000‐word Defence Research Paper, a Campaigning formal Exercise and a Defence Policy and Strategic Planning Formal Exercise. The criteria that are assessed for Tier 1 are knowledge and understanding; intellectual skills of analysis synthesis and evaluation; transferable skills: application and use of skills, autonomy and self‐evaluation and problem solving and practical skills: management of information, technical expertise and communications. Tier 2 assessments are formal oral presentations and are assessed against the following criteria: intellectual competence: Knowledge: analysis and effective intelligence and professional competence: understanding of doctrine, policy and strategies; quality of work, delivery style and performance in cross‐examination; communications skills; time management. Tier 3 assessment is a through course assessment of broader qualities of leadership, management and inter‐personal qualities: management and organisation; leadership and ability to act as a team member; decision making; motivation and dynamism; courage and values; social engagement and inter‐personal skills. 38 On ACSC10 all students visited the USA, Portugal, Belgium, Germany and France. 39 Partnering institutions include: Bolton Institute, De Montfort University, Coventry University, Durham Business School, University of Greenwich Business School, Kingston University, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool John Moores University, the Open University, Huddersfield University, University of Westminster and London South Bank University. 40 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Professional Military Education: An Asset for Peace and Progress, A Report for the CSIS Study Group on Professional Military Education (note 19) pp.19–20.

With the specific analysis of the structure and working mode of the fresh air conditioning system, the experiment platform of solar fresh air measurement and control system is established. Basing on the thermodynamic features of solar fresh air measurement and is control system and experimental data, a mathematical model is designed. Then, the simulation is completed on the basis of the mathematical model. Ultimately, the intelligent control purpose of solar fresh air measurement and control system is achieved.

Radars play a crucial role in military air operations. They allow the detection with great accuracy of aircrafts flying at long distances. The exploitation of radars within an air command and control (C2) operational center is made possible through the use of operational information systems. The process of detecting an aircraft’s position, direction and speed from radar measurements to identify possible threats lies in the field of data fusion and especially in tracking. The implementation and testing of tracking algorithms require realistic radar data, and especially data that correspond to extreme radar phenomena that might occur in air C2 data fusion systems. A simulation of a parameterizable multi radar network that lies under an air C2 system has been developed. After simulating radar data, several sensor data fusion algorithms have been implemented and applied, with aim to find a solution that best fits in the specific problem and the environment of study. Specifically, Kalman filters, gating, nearest neighbor, interactive multiple filter and joint probability data association (IMMJPDA) have been implemented and evaluated. The simulation of both aircraft and radar data allowed for the evaluation of the performance of these algorithms. The results showed that IMMJPDA is a solution that handles well radar tracking even in extreme simulated scenarios.

: The Air Operations Center (AOC) is the centerpiece of the Air Force's new command and control (C2) system for prosecuting theater conventional war. The AOC is a direct outgrowth of the Tactical Air Control Center (TACC). In Vietnam, the TACC mirrored the divided command structure of the US military establishment in Southeast Asia. This resulted in a C2 system that allowed air power to be responsive to the needs of traditional land campaigns, and yet require extensive planning time for deep interdiction and strategic attacks. Additionally, since a land strategy dictated targeting priorities in South Vietnam, the Air Force's measure of effectiveness in the South was its ability to strike targets requested by ground commanders efficiently. Similarly, agencies other than the Air Force selected and approved deep interdiction and strategic targets during Rolling Thunder. Thus, the Air Force's measure of effectiveness in the North likewise became its efficiency of attacking targets there. Assessment thereby became disconnected from the political and military objectives.

The UK government’s Integrated Review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, published in March 2021 alongside a supporting defence command paper, set a new course for UK national security and highlighted opportunities for an innovative approach to international engagement activity. The Integrated Review focused principally on the state threats posed by China’s increasing power and by competitors – including Russia – armed with nuclear, conventional and hybrid capabilities. It also stressed the continuing risks to global security and resilience due to conflict and instability in weakened and failed states. These threats have the potential to increase poverty and inequality, violent extremism, climate degradation and the forced displacement of people, while presenting authoritarian competitors with opportunities to enhance their geopolitical influence. There are moral, security and economic motives to foster durable peace in conflict-prone and weakened regions through a peacebuilding approach that promotes good governance, addresses the root causes of conflict and prevents violence, while denying opportunities to state competitors. The recent withdrawal from Afghanistan serves to emphasize the complexities and potential pitfalls associated with intervention operations in complex, unstable regions. Success in the future will require the full, sustained and coordinated integration of national, allied and regional levers of power underpinned by a sophisticated understanding of the operating environment. The UK armed forces, with their considerable resources and global network, will contribute to this effort through ‘persistent engagement’. This is a new approach to overseas operations below the threshold of conflict, designed as a pre-emptive complement to warfighting. To achieve this, the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) must develop a capability that can operate effectively in weak, unstable and complex regions prone to violent conflict and crises, not least in the regions on the eastern and southern flanks of the Euro-Atlantic area. The first step must be the development of a cohort of military personnel with enhanced, tailored levels of knowledge, skills and experience. Engagement roles must be filled by operators with specialist knowledge, skills and experience forged beyond the mainstream discipline of combat and warfighting. Only then will individuals develop a genuinely sophisticated understanding of complex, politically driven and sensitive operating environments and be able to infuse the design and delivery of international activities with practical wisdom and insight. Engagement personnel need to be equipped with: An inherent understanding of the human and political dimensions of conflict, the underlying drivers such as inequality and scarcity, and the exacerbating factors such as climate change and migration; - A grounding in social sciences and conflict modelling in order to understand complex human terrain; - Regional expertise enabled by language skills, cultural intelligence and human networks; - Familiarity with a diverse range of partners, allies and local actors and their approaches; - Expertise in building partner capacity and applying defence capabilities to deliver stability and peace; - A grasp of emerging artificial intelligence technology as a tool to understand human terrain; - Reach and insight developed through ‘knowledge networks’ of external experts in academia, think-tanks and NGOs. Successful change will be dependent on strong and overt advocacy by the MOD’s senior leadership and a revised set of personnel policies and procedures for this cohort’s selection, education, training, career management, incentivization, sustainability and support.

Introduction: This article considers mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). More specifically, it aims to illustrate the current picture of mTBI among military personnel, including its definition, prevalence rates, markers, possible long-term consequences, and current approaches to treatment. Methods: Information is drawn from current reports published by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre Task Force on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and high-impact academic research in the field, mainly making use of US and UK military data. Moreover, this article also includes exclusive data on the number of mTBI cases among the UK military for the period between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2016 that the author received from the Department of Defence Statistics at the MoD. Results: There is still no agreement on the classification and etiology of and best approach to the management of mTBI. Furthermore, prevalence rates vary considerably among UK and US service personnel. Although current MoD data show that the mTBI rates among UK service personnel are low, the seriousness of the potential long-term effects of mTBI should not be overlooked. Discussion: Because mTBI is the most controversial form of TBI in terms of its cause and nature, it continues to raise ardent debates among researchers and clinicians. This article recognizes this and thus incorporates as many different perspectives as possible.

Like many complex enterprises, UK Defence is struggling with a series of frustrating organisational, system and technology problems, including: increasing scale and complexity, increasing need for continuous capability evolution and increasing need to optimise at the system of systems level. Within this context, Niteworks provides flexible decision support to address three priority areas: support to current operations; support to decision making by the Joint Capabilities Board (JCB), and; support to complex acquisition. This paper describes Niteworks' unique collaborative partnership construct that allows UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) and industry engagement in a neutral, consensus‐based, yet agile manner to address a wide range of complex decision support activities. It details the enabling commercial arrangements, the underlying principles for success and a generic decision model. This approach, the ‘Niteworks Way‘, has been designed by applying systems engineering thinking and methods to the Defence Enterprise and Niteworks within it. The approach has been demonstrated to be flexible and responsive by addressing issues across the range of the UK Defence Enterprise. It has also delivered sizeable value to both UK MOD and industry, demonstrating that collaborations can work effectively and that both industry and the MOD can benefit from embracing new concepts and commercial arrangements.

Human performance modeling (HPM) has been effective for determining crew designs. Crew design includes determining the number of operators needed, the role of automation, and member task responsibilities required to operate a system. Crew models are built for target systems under development to better inform the design and the needs of each operator’s user interface. This is a Verification and Validation (V&V) challenge—it is difficult to obtain metrics to validate a model when the completed system does not yet exist for obtaining sample measures. This paper addresses the challenge with an implementation of the V&V approach applying it to an HPM that successfully received V&V Accreditation for a large United States Air Force (USAF) command and control system. This paper then compares the results of the validated model with NASA TLX workload metrics and discusses the V&V effectiveness. Finally, it recommends better methods for V&V for human performance models.

The paper describes the development of a formal security policy model in Z for the NATO Air Command and Control System (ACCS): a large, distributed, multilevel-secure system. The model was subject to manual validation, and some of the issues and lessons in both writing and validating the model are discussed. >

With the continuous improvement of people's demand for interactive experience,gesture interaction technology, as a natural and intuitive way of human-computer interaction, has attracted more and more attention and research. However, the research and application of gesture interaction in command and control system is still lacking. Firstly, the characteristics of command and control system and the key technologies of gesture interaction are investigated in this study.Then a series of operating gestures that meet the application scenarios of the command and control system are designed,and a gesture recognition algorithm based on the fusion of image data and skeletal data is proposed.By integrating with the command and control system, the function of controlling the command and control system through gestures is realized. Finally, the feasibility and effect of gesture interaction technology in the application scenarios of command and control system are evaluated through experiments.The experimental results show that the application effect of the technology in the command and control system system is good, which can reach 94.89% under typical tasks, improving the interaction efficiency and interaction experience.

Research was conducted recently at Naval Postgraduate School focusing on the development of a system architecture for a tactical naval Command and Control (C2) system. The system architecture methodology started with describing an operational concept, moved to the co-development of the functional architecture and the physical architecture, and concluded with the development of a notional operational architecture. A portion of the contact prosecution process for a Surface Action Group (SAG) involved in securing local sea control was modeled in the discrete-event simulation software Arena®, and this effort is the focus of this paper. Simulations for both potential alternative designs were conducted. Finally, a comparison of the simulation results demonstrated the feasibility of the developed architecture framework to compare alternative designs of the C2 system.

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has developed a multi-channel, multi-mode, multi-band modular communications terminal called the Joint Combat Information Terminal (JCIT). The JCIT is the heart of the communications system for the Army Airborne Command and Control System (A2C2S). The production-ready JCIT has been field tested by the US Marine Corps (USMC) in command and control variants of the Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) and Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV). The functionality, expandability, and modularity of JCIT provide state-of-the-art communications for military and civil agencies. Interoperability with SINCGARS, HAVE QUICK, HF, National Satellite Intelligence Broadcasts, military precision GPS, IEEE-802.11, direct broadcast by satellite (DBS/GBS), air traffic control, police, fire, and civil maritime has been demonstrated in the field and in the laboratory. The JCIT architecture was designed to meet current and future military command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C41) requirements. It provides a total communications system solution from the antenna to the user the modules developed for the JCIT are not proprietary. The architecture is built from a common set of hardware and software modules. Software allows the hardware to interoperate with other legacy or future radio systems on operator command hardware and software insertion to meet future requirements is supported by the architecture. The architecture is readily adaptable to new platforms, utilizing unchanged hardware and software modules. Although the architecture is not considered "open" by the industry standards, full Government owned interface control documents exist that allow any third party to build hardware or software components for the system. Eight-channel vehicular/airborne units and two-channel vehicular/manpack units have been built. These units share hardware modules and software applications without modification.

The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence – the Case for Followership as a key Element of Leadership Development Professor Derrick J Neal1, Mr Petros S Boutselis, Mr Jim Bennett Abstract Using the Kelley (1992) Followership Style instrument this study explores the role and perceptions of Followership within the UK Ministry of Defence. In particular, within the Armed Services and the Civil Service it was apparent from the literature that only the RAF formally recognised the role of Followership within their Leadership staff development programmes, hence the research aimed to see whether this was reflected in self-perceptions of Followership Style and the extent to which it is applied within the organisation. The analysis concluded that the analysed sample (298 responses) produced an atypical profile compared to other studies that have used the instrument. The RAF showed statistically significant higher scores than the other Armed Services or the Civil Servants and scores increased with Rank/Grade. The analysis also highlighted that the individuals seemed not to be recognised as good Followers by their leaders, they appeared not to recognise their reports as good Followers and in all cases the organisation seemed not to recognise their value. These aspects provide scope for further research to better understand the organisational culture, processes and practices that appear to act as a barrier to the extraction of the benefits of having good Followers even in an area where Star Followers dominate. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/smq.v3n4a1

Versions of this paper were first presented at the Royal Institute of Navigation GNSS Vulnerabilities and Solutions Conference held at Baska, Croatia in September 2008 and the Royal Institute of Navigation NAV 08 Conference held at Church House, Westminster, London in October 2008.The US Global Positioning System (GPS) is currently the primary source of Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) information in maritime applications, whether stand-alone or augmented with additional systems. This situation will continue in the future with GPS, possibly together with other Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) e.g. Galileo, being the core PNT technology for e-Navigation – the future digital maritime architecture. GPS signals, measured at the surface on the Earth, are very weak. As such, the system is vulnerable to unintentional interference and jamming, resulting in possible denial of service over large geographical areas. The result of such interference could be the complete failure of the mariner's GPS receiver or, possibly worse, the presentation to the mariner of hazardously misleading information (HMI) for navigation and situational awareness, depending on how the GPS receiver reacts to the jamming incident. Recognising this, the General Lighthouse Authorities of the United Kingdom and Ireland (GLA), in collaboration with the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), have conducted a series of sea-trials with the aim of identifying the full effects of GPS jamming on safe navigation at sea.This paper presents the key findings of these trials and provides important information on the effect of GPS denial. The GLA are playing a pivotal role in the establishment of eLoran as an independent source of PNT, taking advantage of eLoran's complementary nature, having dissimilar failure modes to GPS and the future GNSS. This paper provides information on the performance of an eLoran receiver in an area of GPS service denial. The paper presents the rationale for the work, details the system architecture employed, the data gathering efforts and finally the data analysis procedures, results and conclusions.

Purpose: The traditional defense acquisition process, designed for minimizing risk, often suffers from excessive time consumption, hindering the timely deployment of advanced weapon systems. As global security dynamics accelerate, nations, including the Republic of Korea (ROK), have introduced Rapid Acquisition Programs to field essential capabilities quickly. This shift, however, necessitates a fundamental change in total quality management (TQM) paradigms. This study investigates viable methods for applying effective TQM techniques within the ROK's rapid acquisition framework, balancing the imperative for speed with the non-negotiable requirement for system quality and reliability.Methods: The research methodology includes a comparative analysis of foreign rapid acquisition QM cases, such as the U.S. Middle Tier of Acquisition (MTA), The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD)’s urgent operational requirements (UORs) process and an assessment of current domestic practices through expert interviews and surveys. To conduct a survey on the current status and development direction of the rapid acquisition project (rapid requirement/rapid pilot), the survey consisted of 35 questions divided into four categories (basic information, awareness of the rapid acquisition project, quality assurance cases, development plans and improvement directions).Results: Successful rapid acquisition necessitates a flexible, tailored, and risk-adjusted quality oversight model that focuses on critical-to-mission parameters rather than rote compliance with a broad, uniform standard. The introduction of a Rapid Acquisition Process for Weapon Systems is only possible when it is based on the establishment of a world-class quality management system and is accompanied by the strategic vision of the top leader, strong leadership, and an organizational culture committed to fostering a powerful military force.Conclusion: This thesis proposes an integrated QM model that links Systems Engineering (SE) Technical Reviews with the selective use of Manufacturing Readiness Assessment (MRA) and introduces structured Quality Control Gates (QCGs) tailored to the project's risk profile and rapid timeline. The QCG framework emphasizes the assessment of core quality attributes and critical items rather than comprehensive checks. Based on this model, the study derives institutional improvement plans, including specific revisions to the ROK Defense Acquisition Quality Management Regulations, to ensure that the Quality Assurance Agency can efficiently conduct quality activities based on the finalized Configuration Identification Document while maximizing speed and efficiency.