TACTICS: TACTICal Service Oriented Architecture

Abstract: Due to the increasing complexity and heterogeneity of contemporary Command, Control, Communications, Computers, & Intelligence systems at all levels within military organizations, the adoption of the Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) principles and concepts is becoming essential. SOA provides flexibility and interoperability of services enabling the realization of efficient and modular information infrastructure for command and control systems. However, within a tactical domain, the presence of potentially highly mobile actors equipped with constrained communications media (i.e., unreliable radio networks with limited bandwidth) limits the applicability of traditional SOA technologies. The TACTICS project aims at the definition and experimental demonstration of a Tactical Services Infrastructure enabling tactical radio networks (without any modifications of the radio part of those networks) to participate in SOA infrastructures and provide, as well as consume, services to and from the strategic domain independently of the user's location.