<title>Virtual command center for distributed collaborative undersea warfare</title>

Abstract

The Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport (NUWCDIVNPT) and its partners have developed a prototype CTI (Command Technology Initiatives) Test Bed to demonstrate the utility of a facility where warfighters, government, academia and industry can evaluate the application of collaborate decision support and advanced computer graphics technologies to submarine command and control. The CTI Test bed is currently comprised of three components: Collaborative Visualization Environment (CVE) for Submarine Command and Control, which provides a coherent 3-D display of the perceived undersea battlespace. Individual windows can display multi-dimensional data/information to support a common picture of undersea battlespace management and tactical control; Submarine Fleet Mission Programming Library (SFMPL) which provides environmental data, such as transmission loss, to CVE; Command and Control Data Server which provides contact reports, areas of uncertainty, and ownship/contact motion to CVE Facilitated by a CORBA<SUP>4</SUP> (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) compliant architecture, remotely connected collaborators interact via a computer network to generate and share information. Additionally, collaborators communicate orally via network telephony. Currently, the CTI Test bed is configured to provide volumetric displays of: undersea battlespace w/ bathymetry; Detection/Counter-detection regions for a given probability of detection; Contact(s) Volume of Uncertainty The CTI Test Bed provides a CORBA compliant framework, which can be readily expanded to evaluate candidate applications of collaborative command and tactical decision support and advanced computer graphics technologies.