Collaborative Services and Apps for Fires and Effects Planning, Analysis, and Deconfliction

Our overall objective for this Phase II SBIR program is to develop advanced collaborative decision support technologies for planning and delivery of fires and effects. Our technical approach features a four-tier architecture: 1) Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is used as a foundational layer for message transport and presence, 2) a collaboration layer provides capability discovery, geolocation, and other services to support ad hoc team formation and collaboration, 3) an application services layer encapsulates algorithms for 3D airspace deconfliction, collateral damage estimation, and other domain-specific decision support requirements, and 4) a top tier features a suite of end-user apps including spot reports, target nomination, blue force situational awareness, and 3D battlefield visualization. To facilitate technology transition, we will integrate these collaborative services and apps with existing and emerging Army fires and effects command and control systems such as ARDECs Firestorm, and test the framework in warfighter experiments to develop and evaluate new capabilities and CONOPS for next-generation ground warfare.