Commanding the Terrain of Battle
Written by Karen E. Thuermer
Army battlespace awareness program
captures integrated terrain and weather information
for mission planning and execution.
To ensure they are presented with the best information regarding terrain and weather, a set of predictive decision tools is being designed and developed under the Battlespace Terrain Reasoning and Awareness-Battle Command program (BTRA-BC) to capture integrated terrain and weather effects. These tools can be utilized by commanders and their subordinates in their battle plans and humanitarian missions as either desktop applications, services or embedded applications, depending on the architecture, network topology and user’s business processes.
Terrain and weather effects represent a fundamental, enabling piece of battlefield information supporting situational awareness and the decision-making processes within C4ISR. These effects can both enhance or constrain force tactics and behaviors, platform performance, system performance and the warfighter.
Now in its seventh year, the BTRA-BC program— under the management of the Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s (ERDC) Topographic Engineering Center (TEC) and team members from ERDC’s Geotechnical & Structures Laboratory, Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, and Construction Engineering Research Laboratory—has quickly become a critical enabler in the Army geospatial information officer’s efforts to bring about an Army geospatial enterprise.
“BTRA-BC was established because the Army is trying to figure out the best way to deliver geospatial information and tools down to the lowest common denominator of soldier,” said Dan Visone, director, Geospatial Acquisition Support Directorate, Army Geospatial Center.
BTRA-BC’s mission is to perform research and development to create advanced geospatial analysis and processing capabilities that support a wide range of missions for the warfighter.
ACTIONABLE INFORMATION
Essentially, BTRA-BC tools are being developed to stress computational efficiency and seek to maximize the ratio between the actionable information content of its products and the size of the products to ensure that they can be transmitted over tactical communications networks.
“The problem with terrain information is it’s so big, it’s hard to pass down to handheld devices or communication platforms in the battlefield,” Visone explained. “You don’t want to pass gigabytes of information.”
Consequently, BTRA-BC seeks to take data and turn it into information and knowledge, providing a much smaller information structure that still contains the information needed by the decision-maker at the appropriate echelon.
BTRA-BC is focused on developing six information generation components and five decision tools that address terrain and weather effects. Each of these components uses geospatial feature data; digital elevation models; current and forecasted weather; and information on tactics, techniques and system performance.
“We are providing state-of-the-art tools that not only help commanders understand the effects of terrain and weather during the military decision-making process, but also make sure the information is characterized and attributed correctly to support all war fighting activities,” Visone said. “For example, we are trying to make certain an intelligence, fire support or maneuver soldier can reason on the same terrain structure or piece of ground in a common way with consistent terrain and weather impacts.”
This is accomplished by leveraging years of military experience from a group of subject matter experts (SMEs), from multiple military disciplines, who work together on the definition, design and evolution of the engines to ensure that the information provided is of value to the commander.
The goal is to characterize the battlefield, based on weather and terrain effects to make the commander’s decision process easier across a variety of war fighting functions. BTRA-BC does this by providing the tools to generate information addressing observation, cover and concealment, obstacles and mobility, key terrain, and avenues of approach; integrated products defining operational positions of advantage; high-fidelity weather/ terrain effects of mobility and signature physics; advanced mobility analysis; digital ground and air maneuver potential; and tactical structures relating information produced by the other components.
Decision tools operate on BTRA-BC information products, not the original data. These tools support predictive multicriteria, multi-objective maneuver and logistical route analysis for ground and air platforms and forces; predictive sensor performance, such as infrared, millimeter wave, seismic and acoustic; terrain-based common operating area evaluation and wargaming; and predictive threat assessment.
SOFTWARE ENGINES
The BTRA-BC engines are being developed in a tiered process, with the products of the engines defined as tactical spatial objects (TSOs). Tier 1 TSOs can be defined as firstprinciple qualities or military value of terrain and weather effects on military operations. The value and use of these products are independent of the mission. Examples of Tier 1 TSOs are obstacles, cover and concealment, key terrain, fields of fire and cross-country movement.
Tier 2 TSOs can be defined as products suitable for a specific unit/force type/echelon or multiple force types to perform well-defined military tasks or actions consistent with a mission or objective. The value or use of these products is based upon mission or objective. Examples of Tier 2 TSOs are assembly areas, movement projection, ambush sites, engagement areas, battle positions and tactical logistics.
Last year, BTRA-BC released its first set of engines through the Commercial Joint Mapping Toolkit (CJMTK). These engines are the building blocks for transforming the geospatial data into the foundation structures, including the maneuver network, to support future Tier 1 and Tier 2 analysis engines like movement projection that will be integrated into the Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A).
“CJMTK was chosen as the delivery mechanism for our engines,” Visone explained. “It allowed us to deliver once to support many instead of working with each program individually.” This year, a Linux Reference Implementation Sample Application (RISA) for the Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below blue-force tracking program was released. The RISA was designed and provided as a sample software build that demonstrates the BTRA-BC applications on the platform.
A series of movement projection engines will also be released this calendar year. The engines will help the commander perform different types of route analysis looking at off-road, on-road, and dismounted networks. One could think of them in terms of a military version of an online mapping site such as MapQuest. Movement projection allows the commander to ask such questions as, “What is the fastest, most concealed route through this mobility corridor?”
“Getting our engines into CJMTK is a start, but I measure our success when programs take and integrate the engines for the soldier,” said Visone. “We are currently supporting the integration of our engines through the project director, Combat Terrain Information Systems, into DCGS-A. This is truly our first success to support the warfighter.”
Critical to the successful delivery of BTRA-BC engines to CJMTK and the warfighter is the support this program receives from TEC’s Joint-Geospatial Enterprise Service (J-GES) program. J-GES supports the experimentation of geospatial technologies as they migrate to a net-centric environment. J-GES has supported two critical aspects of the BTRA-BC development: the characterization and performance of the engines on the network and the value of the BTRA-BC tools to the commander during the military decision-making process.
Researchers at George Mason University (GMU) have led experiments looking at engine deployment based on architectures, network topologies and the concept of operations (or use) of BTRA-BC in the field. The goal of these experiments was to understand when it makes sense to deploy tools as desktop applications, Web services or embedded applications. GMU also led two value experiments with the BTRA-BC tools, having soldiers execute missions with and without the tools to quantify the “goodness” or “value” of the tools to the commander in their decision-making process.
The J-GES program helps ensure that TEC meets its customers’ needs with respect to geospatial data, information and services, and provides recommendations on the best way to deploy these to support the warfighter.
GOING FORWARD
With the foundation engines delivered to CJMTK, the program is focusing on the Tier 1 and Tier 2 engine development and delivery.
“We are working on tactical river crossings, tactical bridging and a whole list of other engines prioritized by the SMEs,” said Visone. “This year, we are putting out more decision aid tools, including new movement projection capabilities—our version of Google Maps.”
Visone mentioned that tools are also being developed to build and exploit air maneuver networks. “If you know what has military significance or ‘goodness’ of the ground based on terrain, you should be able to build and tie air maneuver networks to that terrain to support unmanned aerial sensor deployment for surveillance and collection,” he said. “We are researching an integrated air-ground set of networks supporting a multimodal approach.”
BTRA-BC plans to expand the engine set for use in urban settings in the future. “Urban routing is much different than routing in rural areas,” Visone pointed out. “There are many other factors to consider in an urban environment, which is making us look at what unique urban attributes and costs need to be added.”
The BTRA-BC team is also looking for the optimal way to integrate dynamic information from the battlefield, and how it affects the costs on the networks. For example, if an improvised explosive device is reported, how does the user dynamically reroute based on that event?
“There can be a number of engines developed with the FY 2011 budget,” said Visone. “Hopefully, we will continue to find the dollars to transition them. Our current transition success is directly attributable to the support and Technology Transition Initiative funding we received from the Office of the Secretary of Defense that has supported the BTRA-BC CJMTK Extension program.”
Much of BTRA-BC’s success, Visone stressed, is attributable to the involvement of team members. “We have a great blend of academia, industry, SMEs and government working together to make sure that when we build these tools, they meet the soldier’s needs.”
In recognition of their outstanding cooperation, the BTRA-BC team was awarded the 2008 ERDC Team Award. “The successful integration of terrain, weather and air culminating in the development of the BTRA-BC engines required a true synergy of the strengths of each team member and their desire for the team to succeed,” stated Visone.
For now, Visone is pleased with BTRA-BC’s progress, since one of the program’s goals was to move engines beyond the CJMTK and into specific programs. His team’s motto, “Tangible Products to the Warfighter,” is coming to fruition. ♦
