Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based Enterprise Management for MILSATCOM tactical environments

The Department of Defense (DoD) vision for Global Information Grid (GIG) Net-centric Operations consists of a unified communications architecture, including satellite, airborne, terrestrial, and wireless networks. It is crucial that time-sensitive communications is seamless across all these traditionally stove-piped mission and system domains, in order to meet the demands of current and future warfighters. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has become the preferred approach to span these stove-pipes, enable seamless communications through MILSATCOM enterprise situational awareness and fulfill the net-centric, interoperability strategic vision. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction (3010.02, 6212.01E), DoD Information Enterprise Architecture (IEA) (v1.2) and DISA SATCOM-GIG Integration Roadmap recommends Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as a foundation for achieving program interoperability. Many organizations have difficulty defining net-ready, net-centric and interoperable needs in terms of their mission and how SOA meets their requirements. Our SOA approach for MILSATCOM focuses on delivering communications system status information in a standardized format to improve situational awareness for the MILSATCOM enterprise, which ultimately supports faster responses to enterprise outages and enables more efficient employment of limited MILSATCOM resources. This paper leverages lesson learned from previous SOA implementations capturing a systematic engineering approach to identify net-centric, interoperability needs in mission systems. We use proven open standards and common platforms for shared information processing and distribution. We provide examples of future characteristics of a SOA operating in a net-centric environment to make available the MILSATCOM enterprise status, potential remote operations and configurations to improve system availability and seamless communications. Furthermore, it highlights network management tools and techniques, and information assurance to secure the enterprise information.