Robust Coordination Under Extreme Uncertainty (Phase 1 Proposal Number D143-005-0143)

Under this effort, we propose to build COASTeR, Course of Action analysis by STR. COASTeR will build on our Phase I Robust Coordination effort, which demonstrated that courses of action (COAs) that include explicit pre-planning for contingencies can be effectively employed to proactively coordinate distributed battle management by mixed manned/unmanned teams in highly uncertain environments, improving battlespace outcomes and reducing cognitive load during mission execution relative to current state-of-the-art reactive approaches. Key innovations include the use of contingency policies to address classes of foreseeable battlespace disruptions, and a tractable approach to stochastic wargaming for COA analysis to inform selection of appropriate COAs. COASTeR will generalize and adapt the Phase I mechanism in several important ways. First, we will demonstrate the effectiveness of the Phase I coordination methodology beyond simplified air-to-ground kill chains to consider a wider set of missions, assets, and ways of employing them. Second, the wargaming capability will be extended to model metric time, capacitated resources, and multi-role assets. Finally, COASTeR will feature a model-based software design, providing modular capabilities to rapidly support user-defined missions and simplify alignment with DARPAs RSPACE and DBM programs.