A reconfigurable C4 testbed for experimental studies into network enabled capability

This paper reports on the development of a command and control environment that enables experimental studies to be conducted into network enabled capability (NEC). The command and control environment comprises a reconfigurable command wall, and wireless local area network and eight reconfigurable wearable computers. A pilot study was undertaken to test the system and investigate the differences between a paper-map-and-radio and a NEC version of the same. No performance differences were found in a reconnaissance task. It was hypothesised that performance gains would be found for the NEC system when multiple reconnaissance agents compared to the paper-map-and-radio version of the system. Future directions for the research were indicated.