NATO MSG-048 coalition battle management initial demonstration lessons learned and follow-on plans

The NATO Modeling and Simulation Group Technical Activity 48 (MSG-048) was chartered in 2006 to investigate the potential of a Coalition Battle Management Language for multinational and NATO interoperation of command and control systems with modeling and simulation. In its May, 2007 meeting, MSG-048 decided to undertake as its first technical project a multinational demonstration, using the US Joint Battle Management Language (JBML) phase 1 prototype Web services as central infrastructure. The demonstration was presented in November, 2007 and consisted of three different operational national C2 systems interoperating with three different national simulations, supported by the JBML Web services and an open source C2 visualizer from the US, and the C2 Lexical GUI from Germany. In all, eight software systems from six nations successfully interoperated. This capability was achieved in only six months, based on use of an Internet Reference Implementation that all parties could use to test from their home laboratories, combined with a high level of cooperation among technical personnel and military subject matter experts from all participating nations. This paper will provide an overview of the interoperation technology and component systems used in the MSG-048 initial demonstration, describe the lessons learned in the process of creating the demonstration, and describe the planned way ahead for the work of MSG-048, including its support for validation of the products of SISO's C-BML Product Group.