Mission Analytics and NetOps Awareness (MANA)

Success of global military operations requires access to data, data exchange, and situational awareness (SA) based on timely and trustworthy information. Commanders need to know in advance that relevant, accurate data will be available. If there is doubt about its availability, they need to know this so they can make contingency plans. Therefore, accurate and timely SA of network operations (NetOps) is critical to the successful execution of naval functions. Any solution for providing SA of NetOps must function within the distributed, decentralized environment of US naval functions. In addition, the network components of military systems are rich, complex, and dynamic, and we expect NetOps SA to be rife with uncertainty. Under Mission Analytics and NetOps Awareness (MANA), Charles River Analytics will use distributed probabilistic relational models (PRMs) to provide timely and accurate SA of NetOps under uncertainty, to support mission-critical decision-making. Because PRMs model a situation as a set of objects and relationships between the objects, they are very capable of modeling and reasoning about uncertainty while capturing the richness and complexity of a situation. PRMs"object-oriented nature also makes them well-suited to a distributed implementation.