Battle Management Language capable Computer Generated Forces

The development of Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) by SISO and its evaluation by the NATO MSG-085 task group and predecessor NATO MSG-048 has led Norway and the Netherlands to develop C-BML interfaces for their Command and Control Information Systems (C2ISs) NORTaC-C2IS and ISIS. FFI (Norway) and TNO (The Netherlands) are cooperating in extending a COTS Computer Generated Forces (CGF) tool with a C-BML interface for executing C-BML orders and issuing reports. The problem that has to be solved is threefold: (1) the orders issued by the C2ISs are in accordance with C-BML while the COTS CGF can only execute native tasks, (2) the orders are generally on a higher level (company) while the CGF is designed to execute platoon or even single platform tasks and (3) the COTS CGF does not natively issue C-BML reports. In order to address the required transformation of orders (from company level to platoon or single platform level), the COTS CGF is complemented with external C2 agents. Norway and the Netherlands are investigating the use of different agent modelling paradigms for this purpose, namely Context-Based Reasoning (CxBR) and the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) paradigm. The activities are carried out in the framework of the Anglo Netherlands Norwegian Cooperation Programme (ANNCP). The partners are working towards a common solution by sharing and comparing results of both approaches. This paper presents the approaches, the architectures, the agent modelling paradigms and gives an overview of future work.