Two approaches to developing a multi-agent system for battle command simulation

In the military, Command and Control Information Systems (C2ISs) are used for issuing commands to subordinate units. In training or decision support, simulations are used instead of live military forces. The Coalition Battle Management Language (C-BML) is currently being developed as an interface language between C2ISs, simulations and robotic forces, and Norway (FFI) and the Netherlands (TNO) are working towards extending their national C2ISs and a COTS simulation system with a C-BML interface. One of the challenges encountered during this work is the fact that the orders issued by the C2IS are at company level and above, while most available simulation systems are designed to execute platoon and single platform tasks. Both FFI and TNO are investigating using a multi-agent system for decomposing orders to lower level task by simulating national tactics and doctrine. This paper presents and compares our development approaches and agent modeling paradigms.