Toward federated mission networking in the tactical domain

NATO is currently working on the Federated Mission Networking (FMN) concept, which will become the foundation for establishing mission networks in the future. The realization of the FMN concept is described in the NATO FMN Implementation Plan (NFIP). The information infrastructure outlined in NFIP today builds on the concept of service-oriented architecture in order to achieve interoperability, and bases itself on many of the same standards and specifications as the ones identified through NATO Network Enabled Capabilities (NNEC). The NNEC SOA Baseline [1] identifies a number of core enterprise services that represent the common functionality needed to build an interoperable service-oriented infrastructure in a federation. It further identifies which standards should be used to realize these core services while ensuring interoperability between the federation members. A subset of these capabilities includes messaging services, collaboration services, service discovery, and security services. This article looks into each of these foundational core services, presents the challenges related to extending support for these services into the tactical domain, and identifies potential solutions.