SUO communicator: agent-based support for small unit operations

In small unit operations (SUO), people and equipment work together to meet some mission objective, have distinct roles and information needs, but are often distributed geographically. We describe the SUO Communicator, a combat situation awareness, information management, and communication system for use in small unit operations. The design is agent-based. Key ideas include email-based communication that is scalable and supports disconnected operation over tethered and wireless LANs and WANs; XML-based messaging, including init messages that provision a generic agent (egent) into a role-enabled egent; and an explicit representation for scenarios in terms of a bcc log of all messages sent that can also be used to drive simulations and for after-action analysis.