As discussed previously, the MDA CONOPS envisions a globally netted group of remote sensors providing situational awareness over the maritime domain. This notion however negates the significant value human operators can play in evaluating sensor data and the traditional means of building a common picture of the area. The Zone Pattern provides a method for operators to manage the three relationships a monitoring system has; one, the relationship it has with its automated sources of data such as those provided in the trickle-up pattern, secondly, the relationship a zone has with its subordinates collaborating on the contents and thirdly the relationship a zone has with the consumer of its authoritative content. We examine those relationships as they apply to MDA in the following pages.
A key aspect of the Zone Pattern is the concept of accountability for the quality of the view of the battlespace. One of the challenges discussed earlier is the view of some Command and Control system developers that situational awareness is achieved simply by exposing data sources in a SOA construct, and allowing those sources to be subscribed by a visualization application. The MDA CONOPS architecture is defined by the user defined operational picture (UDOP) constructs, which articulates the above view. UDOP architecture envisions a source to user view that fails to recognize the complexity of merging sources, methods and fusion systems to build a picture that decision makers can fight from. The zone to zone relationship captures this concept that sources and
collaborators work on a common view and prepare a finished view for those who subscribe to the authoritative view. In figure six below a view of the Strait of Malacca between Singapore and Malaysia is shown. The area is a pivotal sea lane of
communication (SLOC) and a significant portion of world energy and commerce supplies transit the waterway. Any MDA strategy would target the area as a good choke point to position numerous sensors to track vessels transiting the waterway. Two nations border the waterway each with different relationships to the U.S. Following the Zone Pattern a series of the sensors would feed a Zone which in turn would correlate the various sources and provide the content to consumers. The U.S. may be one consumer, and the southern nation may have certain filters set to only provide information stipulated in a data sharing agreement with the US (perhaps the nation may filter out its own military units, ect). The northern nation may have different data sharing agreements with the US and the southern nation and provide different content to each.
Figure 38. MDA Sample Sea Lines of Communications View
The next relationship in the Zone Pattern is the Zone to Client. Here the pattern articulates a different relationship between what a Zone shares with its consumers and those who collaborate on it. The Zone to Client construct is a “raw view” as operators work to collaborate on the objects managed by the view. Perhaps on this view,
uncorrelated ELINT hits and AIS reports with no identification are worked on by operators to improve situational awareness. The above type of low quality data would clutter the decision maker view and is usually not actionable enough for decision makers. In an MDA system a number of participants may participate in a Zone, perhaps by region or mission. For example, in the Strait of Malacca area discussed the strait may be divided into sections with a Zone assigned to each. In the Zone perhaps one mid-size vessel, two shore station operators and a regional headquarters as the “Zone Commander” are joined in a Zone. Among the participants in this zone, a raw unprocessed view is created and collaborated on. The Zone leader may sit at the regional headquarters, decide what is actionable and promotes those objects to the Zone to Zone or “national view.”
The last relationship is the Zone to Data Source. This relationship is between the Zone and the data sources it subscribes too. Data sources are automatically generated
collect from sensors like AIS, ELINT or RADAR. These sources are part of the trickle- up pattern and key component of the Zone to Client relationship is the concept that a Zone could reach into any level of the trickle-up pattern of reports, tracks and entities. Expanding on the MDA Strait of Malacca example where regions were divided into Zones. In this example a Zone Commander selects a number of remote data sources to subscribe too. These may be a radar station, ELINT and AIS device within the area of responsibility, as well as the AIS receiver on the ship. These sources now populate the common view of the Zone.
The MDA challenge is significant in both its scope and geographically dispersed nature. The Zone Patterns cellular COP strategy provides the robust, scalable pattern to manage the raw and operator value added content. Enforcing accountability and decision making at the echelon of command suitable for the data analyzed the pattern departs from both the TOP-COP model where every node is a mirror of the commanders and the UDOP model where every source is fed into one general repository where users subscribe to the desired content, but do not add value. The Zone Pattern reflects a realistic view of data sources, clients and partnerships where operators “create” a view of the battlespace from sources and subordinates that is cleaned and analyzed prior to making it available decision makers. In the next section we will discuss how an Auto-Fusion process can employ the trickle-up pattern to provide higher value content to the Zone Pattern.