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Battle Management Language Activities

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16-17 October 2007   The C4I Center in the the Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering hosted a Workshop on Battle Management Language on October 16th and 17th, 2007 at the Verizon Auditorium in the Prince Williams Campus. Over 150 Government, Academic and Industry attendees participated. This is the first Battle Management Language Conference bringing together the diverse communities of Command and Control, Modeling and Simulation and Geospatial Analysis. Battle Management Language is an emerging standard that is being developed to facilitate interoperability between Command and Control systems and other automated systems, such as Simulations and Robots. Battle Management Language has a strong Geospatial component that is also being standardized, with the C4I Center leading the effort. This conference was cosponsored by the Topographic Research Center of the US Army's Engineering Research and Development Laboratory, ESRI, Systematic Software Engineering, MAK Technologies Inc. and Northrop Grumman Information Technology - TASC.

18-23 May 2007   The GMU C4I Center hosted the NATO Modeling & Simulation Group Technical Activity 48 (MSG-048) meeting on 18 to 23 May 2007. This group is evaluating Battle Management Language (BML) which provides for automated interoperation of military Command and Control (C2) systems with simulations. BML is thought to have high promise to facilitate exercises and experiments that can make military coalitions more effective. During the meeting GMU was selected to support a six-nation demonstration, using new Web service software developed by the GMU-led Joint BML project.

Thursday, 3 May 2007   The Joint Battle Management Language (JBML) project held its Phase I Demonstration at the US Joint Forces Command Joint Advanced Training Technology Lab in Suffolk, VA. JBML is new technical approach that supports a standardized linkage of Command and Control systems with Modeling and Simulation systems. It is designed to provide for unambiguous communication and is expected reduce operational costs. The GMU C4I Center is the lead technical performer in JBML. Other participants are Old Dominion University, the Naval Postgraduate School, Howard University, Atlantic Consulting Services of Shrewsbury, NJ, Gestalt LLC of King of Prussia, PA and Dynamics Research Corporation of Andover, MA. The demonstration was enthusiastically observed by a capacity crowd of attendees. It showed for the first time Army, Navy and Air Force command and control to simulation linkage. This was achieved via the JBML Web services, a new technology aligned with the "network centric" approach to warfare.

25-27 July, 2006 The C4I Center hosted simultaneous meetings of two groups working on Coalition Battle Management Language. The C-BML product group of the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) is developing an initial standard (C-BML) that will provide an unambiguous way for command and control (C2) systems to communicate with simulation systems that is also understandable by human commanders and their staffs. The NATO Modeling and Simulation Group (NMSG) Technical Activity 048 is defining a process of experimentation and education that will support evaluation by eight participating nations of the utility of C-BML for various coalition activities such as simulation-based training and mission rehearsal. The two groups held simultaneous meetings to coordinate their agendas, and pronounced themselves very satisfied with the results.

The C-BML is building on another NATO standard activity, the Command and Control Information Exchange Data Model (C2IEDM), which has been developed by the Multilateral Interoperability Programme (MIP) to support information flow among C2 systems.