Interoperable joint planning and execution Web service with TITAN

Defense systems are involved nowadays in missions that require a high level of interoperability. The paradigm of software oriented architecture (SOA) is generally presented as an efficient approach to tackle the lack of technical interoperability between joint tactical land systems. This paper present a practical experiment, between representative US and France chain of command, that focuses on a collaborative mission planning Web Service (WS). The operational expectation is to improve mutual understanding between allied forces to better perform assistance requests between ground supports (logistic, medevac, ...) and to improve coordination between combat units. The mission planning service has been implemented through Web technologies like SOAP, UDDI and XML Schema and relies on the CERDEC TITAN Workflow Orchestration Service. It also uses proactive and reactive planning computation to analyze Friendly Course of Action (FCOA) at preparation time as well as during mission execution. Hosted by the C4ISR OTM team, contributions and main results of the experiments are detailed. Results highlight the benefit of WS design in spite of highly complex functionalities, the interest for automated functions encapsulation and also assess shared awareness involvement in the joint tactical planning process.