Common Technical/Tactical Fire Control Interface (CT2FC)

The future force battlespace will contain numerous different mounted and dismounted armament systems that must execute fire directives from netted effects control cells which may mix and match weapon systems as required to attack targets. Each weapon system has different user interfaces and control stations that translate tactical fire control directives into technical fire control weapon pointing data. This leads to lack of interoperability between systems, especially when combining BLOS, NLOS, and LOS weapon systems on targets to achieve desired effects. Making the systems interoperable is extremely expensive. In Phase I, we proposed to develop a user reconfigurable common fire control interface to perform tactical fire control at netted effects nodes, and technical fire control at any NLOS, BLOS, or LOS weapon platform. We developed a common interface description accounting for multiple weapon systems technical fire control messaging and ballistic kernels, and then developed an actual soldier-machine interface (SMI) and software interface to the XM104 FFW Sight at the end of Phase I. The Phase II effort will extend Phase I interfaces, modify existing netted fires components in the ARDEC CDAS architecture, and interface these components to other technical fire control systems such as mortar and artillery ballistic kernels.