Interconnecting Tactical Service-Oriented Infrastructures with Federation Services

The availability and timely exchange of information is a fundamental requirement for network-centric warfare. An increasing number of military operations are distributed in nature, requiring information sharing across geographically separated enclaves of information. The connectivity between these enclaves consists of tactical links with intermittent connectivity, limited bandwidth, and variable latency. Therefore, the information sharing architecture must accommodate unreliable and transiently disconnected networks. Our middleware approach realizes a set of federation services to interconnect multiple instances of the U.S. Marine Corps' Marine Command and Control Systems and Applications Tactical Service-oriented Architecture (MC2SA TSoA). This federation capability supports a publish/subscribe/query model and provides reliability in the information exchange between information enclaves. The federation capability also supports enforcement of policies to control or limit the nature of the information shared. The ultimate goal is to increase information availability and access regardless of location while providing transparency to clients.