Service-Based Multi-Domain Planning

Military missions often have a deep hierarchical structure due to the need for extensive support for the top-level goal.  A typical strike mission in an Air Tasking Order has the top-level goal to degrade specific targets.  We propose a uniform representation for modeling planning domains and for representing joint/combined/all-domain planning processes.  The essential idea is view plans in terms of services.  We say that a planning goal requires service and that assets (both physical and information) are entities that provide service and may, in turn, require support services. The hierarchical structure of a plan comes from (1) the linkage of a top-level goal with an asset that can provide the service that the goal requires, and (2) the recursive provision of the subservices that the asset requires in order to service the goal.  The focus on services provides the right level of abstraction to allow a natural and precise formulation to planning scenarios and planning processes across many domains, including air, land, sea, space, and cyber domains.