Employing Service Oriented Architecture Technologies to Bind a Thousand Ship Navy

One of the United States Navy's strategic goals is to foster a "thousand ship" Navy, by combining the U.S. Navy with partners from around the globe. A critical requirement to join various Navies from such diverse backgrounds and technology levels is a simple, flexible, and economical Command and Control (C2) system that each stakeholder can employ and extend. Web-based Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) have potential to provide methods and technologies to aid in combining this force; however SOA technology alone will not deliver the desired software "out-of-the-box." To truly reap the benefits of a SOA-based coalition C2 system, the U.S. defense acquisition community should host a coalition-based international C2 software development site, managed by developers and following the open source industry model. Built on proven industry standards and agreed upon software design patterns, the collaborative development site should encourage the development of scalable and flexible C2 systems to address maritime coalition C2 system requirements. This article will examine some coalition C2 system challenges and how SOA technologies can support interoperability. Additionally, the article will discuss two software design patterns that can aid maritime coalition software development and how those patterns employed in conjunction with a community of interest-open source software development framework can lead to C2 systems to bind a "thousand ship" Navy.

Presented at the International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium (ICCRTS 2008) (13th), held in Seattle, WA, on 17-19 June 2008. Prepared in cooperation with PEO C4I Command and Control Program Office, San Diego, CA. The original document contains color images.