Military Communications and Information Technology: A Trusted ...

Chapter 3: Information Technology for Interoperability and Decision...
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but also to operational command and control systems, and robotic systems” [7].
The language developed on the basis of Command and Control Lexical Grammar
(C2LG) with a GUI editor [8], [9] is an XML-based one and a series of experiments
and demonstrations has been undergone with the aim to prove that C-BML
is a promising tool for the exchange of orders and reports between individual C2
systems and constructive simulators [10]. Since the author of this contribution
has not been involved in the aforementioned projects, in the rest of the paper we
will try for an “independent” view of the topic.
We consider DSLs to be a supplementary technology that could be used together
with the mainstream ontology and semantic web technologies. In the case
of C2 systems we see the following areas of utilization of DSLs:
• Specification and modeling tools in the process of development of C2
systems, and
• Subsystems of C2 systems themselves.
In this paper we will consider the latter possibility of utilization. A DSL subsystem
can be incorporated into the architecture of a C2 system (Fig. 1). The DSL
subsystem is used by the User Interface and/or System Integration Interface subsystems
and its role is to process inputs in the form of documents prepared in the DSL.
These documents can have both textual and graphic forms containing, for example,
observed and human-processed information about the battlespace awareness and
knowledge that can influence the Common Operational Picture (COP), or they
could also contain direct commands that could be processed by the Executive
Control Subsystem, which could disseminate them to the appropriate entities.
Figure 1. Elements of an architecture of a C2 system that are interesting from a DSLs point of view