Achieving battlespace awareness in network-centric warfare by integrating web and agent technologies

Transformation of military information systems to a network-centric paradigm will remove traditional barriers to interoperability and enable dynamic access to information and analysis resources. The technical challenges of accomplishing network-centric warfare (NCW) require the engineering of agile distributed software components imbued with the ability to operate autonomously on behalf of human individuals, while maintaining system level integrity, security, and performance efficiency on a grand scale. In this paper, we will describe how agents provide a critical technology enabler for applying emerging commercial technologies, such as web services, into network-centric warfare problems. The objective of our research is developing and sharing battlespace awareness and understanding. Our agent information service manages information collection and dissemination/publishing activities on behalf of fusion services in an autonomous, yet controllable fashion. Agents improve the scalability and reliability at the system of systems level through dynamic selection and exploitation of web services based upon needs and capabilities.