Joint Battle Management Language (JBML) - US Contribution to the C-BML PDG

The Joint Battle Management Language (JBML) is being developed as an unambiguous language for tasking and reporting. This paper summarizes significant US national contributions to the current SISO Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) Product Development Group activities. It focuses on application of the wellknown principles of BML in the joint warfighting context to enable command and control of simulated Joint and Coalition forces. The JBML design is characterized by three layers that enable configurable solutions, not only from the information system perspective, but also from a domain-specific information exchange view. The main ideas are to assemble meaningful sentences of domain-specific information elements in an unambiguous structure that captures the commander’s intent (domain services), defined in terms of meaningful objects that compose data into information elements of general application (composite services), and represented using standardized data elements that are entities of the JC3IEDM (atomic services), which provides a standard vocabulary for all three layers. The services are implemented as Web services supporting C-BML Phase 1. The domain configuration uses a schema motivated by initial work on formal grammar, intended to support C-BML Phase 2. The Web service is configured using this domainspecific knowledge, in the form of an XML Schema Definition. The data encodings are tightly connected with the Joint Command, Control and Consultation Information Exchange Data Model (JC3IEDM), although the higher levels of JBML introduce abstractions that encapsulate the complexity of the underlying data model intended to make the consistent application of JBML as an interface language straightforward. The paper focuses on the JBML layered approach and how these elements contribute to the C-BML standardization activity and its application in the NATO Modeling & Simulation Group Technical Activity 048.