Agent-Based Knowledge Enablers for the Unit of Action

The Army's Unit of Action (UA) is part of a joint team that is decisive in any operation, against any level threat, in any environment. This team must be strategically and operationally responsive, and be able to change patterns of operations faster than the enemy can respond. To meet these goals, it relies on the fusion of information from the Battlefield Functional Areas (BFAs), as well as disparate data from joint partners. In this research, the DAC Team will design and implement an intelligent agent toolkit for Network Centric Warfare that enables data from disparate information sources to be translated, coordinated, and fused in such a way that commanders can better respond to the Commander's Critical Information Requirements associated with a UA. This objective will be realized through three major activities: 1) developing techniques that overcome the heterogeneity of different data sources and represent them in a common ontology, 2) designing and implementing the collaborative agent architecture, and 3) specifying and implementing the interactions between agents in a way that enables critical information to be fused and subsequently presented to the commander.