01 Jul 2002
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Military Communications Network
There are not many annual events where you can make a pitch for your ideas to groups of potential military customers, some groups having a collective total of twenty-five stars on their shoulders! But JWID is one, and this year the ATC gave its pitch to over 600 military visitors during the extended event.
JWID is an MoD event which is part of a larger US-led shindig, and offers the industrial participants a unique opportunity to interact with influential military personnel from all three services of the UK, Europe (NATO), US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. This year it was situated at the MoD site at Portsdown West, and lasted for a month!
During JWID, new tools and techniques can be trialed within an agreed joint (tri-service) and coalition (with partners) war gaming scenario. The emphasis is squarely on enhancing capability in Command, Control, Communications and Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance (C4I/ISTAR), as well as potential solutions to interoperability issues.The ATC had its first taste of JWID in 1999, using its electromagnetic propagation software in the war gaming to set up combat radio networks on the fly. The software was also successfully used to analyse the effects of accidental interference from other networks, as well as from deliberate jamming.
This year, the ATC proposed a concept demonstrator for planning the mission of autonomous swarms of uninhabited air vehicles (UAVs). This was accepted for inclusion in the Joint Forces Head-Quarters component of the scenario.
The month of JWID activities is intense, and as we were interacting with the US Pacific Command, there was the added problem of a time shift - the role plays taking place each day between 6pm and midnight!
The day shift then had to be available for presentations and discussions to the constant stream of visiting military personnel. We gave 63 presentations to visitors from 4* down.
Our demonstration was a radically new approach to mission planning, simulation, rehearsal and execution of tasks for the next generation of UAVs. What we wanted to find out was the military reaction to the prospect of many tens of UAVs working together in an autonomous fashion to carry out a military task.
Our concept was based on the use of software agents. These are computer programmes which communicate with each other and other software to execute a task. Each UAV was allocated a separate software agent, and a collective task defined for them. The agents then negotiated amongst themselves to complete the task to the best of their ability.
Although our demonstration was aimed at UAVs, the technology is equally applicable to many other autonomous systems, such as underwater vehicles, roaming sensor networks, land robots, and so on. All such platforms are liable to have similar issues of collective decision making and co-operation within the future battlespace.
