Collaborative Agents for an Integrated Battlespace

Today's modern battlespace can generally be defined as any and all aspects of the region of time and space surrounding a battle. Most see dominating the battlespace through digitization as the key force multiplier and primary focus for future success. Hampering this effort are the tremendous amounts of data and information that threaten to overload commanders and staff. Needed are integrated approaches that will improve collection, analysis, exchange and presentation of timely information tailored to specific users, allowing each an accurate view of the battlespace. Software agent technologies are one candidate offered to address the information overload problem and the topic of this paper. Outlined in this paper is an on- going program between the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Texas A&M University (TAMU) and University of Maryland (UM) aimed at coupling disparate software agent architectures across a tactical and logistical military decision support system.