Cornerstone: Foundational Models and Services for Integrated Battle Planning

The Air Force has three mission elements, air, space and cyber that it must command and control as a Joint and Coalition partner. Today's Air Operations Centers (AOCs) want to improve multi-domain collaboration. To address these challenges, Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate (AFRL/RI) is sponsoring exploration and development of an Integrated Battle Planning Capability (IBPC) to coordinate and synchronize planning across the three domains. As a first step toward this goal, BAE Systems is developing Cornerstone, a suite of web services for mission request brokering, dynamic model management, plan management, and a Unified Plan Representation (UPR). The UPR is based on already established community standards and a common ontology of shared and domain-specific concepts. This paper describes Cornerstone's research and development accomplishments to date, including an overview of the ontology, system design, and elaboration of the web services. Results from an initial Limited Technology Experiment (LTE) are reviewed. In the LTE, Cornerstone services correctly used the Jena semantic reasoning engine to broker air, cyber, and space mission option data among simulated and human domain-planners. Presented at the 17th International Command & Control Research & Technology Symposium (ICCRTS) held 19-21 June, 2012 in Fairfax, VA. Contains some briefing charts.