FORCENavigator: Collaboration and Knowledge Interoperability in Net-Centric Systems

Ongoing naval operations are characterized by rapidly mutating, asymmetric threats and an ever quickening battle tempo. Networked information tools such as FORCEnet and WebCOP show tremendous promise for providing warfighters vistas of real-time, mission-relevant, battlefield knowledge to counter these threats. But simply presenting and sharing information is not sufficient to enable networked warfighters to comprehend how changing events impact their plans. Pacific Science & Engineering (PSE) proposes to maximize the impact of networked information by developing an integrated suite of collaboration tools to support operational planning teams. This suite of tools is called FORCEnavigator. FORCEnavigator is specifically focused on solving the critical problems of 1) understanding and resolving competing constraints on resources, and 2) maintaining tight congruence across the changes to plans that inevitably occur. PSE has the scientific expertise and decision support development experience, coupled with access to expert military users, to integrate emerging cognitive science concepts in collaboration and knowledge interoperability into an effective and efficient collaboration solution. This proposal lays out the elements of the design of such a system, and it details the tasks necessary to develop a concept prototype of it.