Toward a scalable design for command and control systems

Command and control systems exist in a world of constantly shifting demands and expectations; therefore, producing scalable, evolvable systems has always been a priority of system designers. However the need to meet performance requirements has often been a restraint on scalability goals. Advances in the speed and capacity of computational and communications equipment have substantially increased the range of scalability that can be achieved while still meeting performance requirements. The High Performance Distributed Computing Program (HiPer-D) has demonstrated a design for the AEGIS weapons system, which is close to achieving the full range of operational requirements while providing scalability along several dimensions. This paper discusses the HiPer-D design, its context, development, and efforts to achieve system level performance.