Toward Adaptive and Reflective Middleware for Network-Centric Combat Systems

Software is increasingly important to the development of effective network-centric Department of Defense combat systems. Next-generation combat systems such as total ship computing environments, coordinated unmanned air vehicle systems, and national missile defense will use many geographically dispersed sensors, provide on-demand situational awareness and actuation capabilities for human operators, and respond flexibly to unanticipated run-time conditions. These combat systems will also increasingly run unobtrusively and autonomously, shielding operators from unnecessary details while communicating and responding to mission-critical information at an accelerated operational tempo. In such environments, it is hard to predict system configurations or workloads. This article describes how adaptive and reflective middleware systems ARMS are being developed to bridge the gap between military application programs and the underlying operating systems and communication software to provide reusable services whose qualities are critical to network-centric combat systems. ARMS software can adapt in response to dynamically changing conditions for the purpose of utilizing the available computer and communication resources to the highest degree possible in support of mission needs.