Continuously Optimized Markets for Mission Assured Networking with Dynamic Environments and Resources (COMMANDER)

The goal of Net-Centric Warfare (NCW) is to provide the warfighter with the right information at the right time. As command and control (C2) doctrine and tactics evolve with NCW at their core, mission critical tasks become increasingly reliant on the integrity and responsiveness of network resources. Adding support for Mission Assured Networking (MAN), the capability to map mission critical tasks to the network’s underlying information systems, would allow the warfighter to quickly understand the impact of a network-related event on the success of a mission or task. To address this challenge, we will adopt a distributed Market-Based Optimization (MBO) approach to support rapid generation of resource-data-task mapping. An optimal equilibrium emerges from the bottom-up decentralized interaction of intelligent agents that represent all of the elements of the operational network. Because of our modular, agent-based approach to domain modeling, our approach easily adapts to evolving and emerging network resources, data types, and task definitions. The market also relies on techniques borrowed from “futures markets” that allow agents to act on predictive information. To support scalability and network optimization, we will distribute optimization across a number of markets deployed at specific “robust” nodes that are stable, accessible, and resource-rich.