Two DARPA-developed technologies – a novel decision aid for mission commanders and a rapid software integration tool – played a critical role in the recent Air Force demonstration of the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS).
The Adapting Cross-domain Kill-webs (ACK) program and the System-of-systems Technology Integration Tool Chain for Heterogeneous Electronic Systems (STITCHES) were among a number of technologies employed in the Aug. 31 – Sep. 4 ABMS on-ramp demonstration, which involved attacks using live aircraft, ships, air defense batteries, and other assets.
ACK is developing a decision aid for mission commanders to assist them with rapidly identifying and selecting options for tasking – and re-tasking – assets within and across organizational boundaries. Specifically, ACK assists users with selecting sensors, effectors, and support elements across military domains…
The machine-to-machine communications to enable this distributed fire control was performed by the STITCHES integration toolchain. STITCHES is a software-only and fully government owned (non-proprietary) toolchain specifically designed to rapidly integrate heterogeneous systems across any domain by auto-generating extremely low latency and high throughput middleware between systems without needing to upgrade hardware or breaking into existing system software. The toolchain does not force a common interface standard; rather it rapidly creates the needed connections based on existing fielded capabilities obviating the need to upgrade in order to interoperate.
That was from a DARPA press release. You can hear more about STITCHES in my conversation with Dan Patt and Bryan Clark. I think of STITCHES as enabling on-demand interoperability between systems whose interfaces speak different “languages.” This way, the DoD does not need to invest in huge efforts to first define standard, global interfaces, and then upgrade all existing systems to conform. Instead, STITCHES autogenerates code that will make the translation instead.
ACK seems to be a big beneficiary of STITCHES. Now that data from a range of sensors and shooters can be connected, it seems that ACK is a military-unique tool for integrating data and creating user interfaces to actualize command and control. How much of the ABMS CommandOne is based on ACK, and how much based on other software-defined systems? Interoperability of a bunch of systems through STITCHES is one challenge, creating a tool that enables decision-making and actually relays commands is another. With so much disparate information, I imagine a number of separate applications will be needed for a coherent user experience.
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