Semantics in Course of Action Modeling and Simulation

Planning courses of action for a task force component involves analyzing a considerable amount of data, as well as assessing the available options and their respective impact to the operational goals. This is a time consuming process that is dramatically restricted by the currently established doctrine, which allocates a too short period for this task during its decision cycle. An inefficient COA planning generates losses of resources and compromises the ability of a force to achieve the desired effects in each mission. This study investigates the possibilities of using semantics to support courses of action modeling and simulation via a web services architecture. Our preliminary results indicate that with this semantics-based approach it is possible to automatically generate more than one course of action analysis on the basis of the commander´s intent in a timely manner.