Intellectualizing the Navy's automatic communications control system.

Efficiency in using the Navy's existing communications system depends on how prompt and high-quality the control of its component infrastructure elements is (meaning by the latter the base control, communications centers of C & C facilities, radio communications transmitting facilities, radio communications receiving facilities, and others). Automating collection, treatment, communication, mapping and documenting of information is what in the first place achieves the command and control goals as the Navy addresses its main tasks that consist in controlling its forces and weapons. The same applies to automation of decision-making and execution of control actions designed to promptly redistribute communications forces and assets. The automatic communications control system (ACCS) is intended precisely to enhance the quality and promptness of the Navy controlling its communications system. (1)

Currently the Navy ACCS is a hierarchy of C & C agencies, C & C facilities, and communications and automation assets, which interact via computer-to-computer exchange channels in data communication networks. The ACCS possesses an inner architecture of its own, a number of subsystems, of which the main are the decision-making system and the executive system. Its organizational-functional structure has several levels: administrative (the upper level); control of communications services; control of communication networks and control of network elements (the lower level). The functional levels are contingent on the size of networks and their functional designation, to wit, on whether or not a network belongs to the Navy's strategic, operational-strategic, operational, operational-tactical or tactical C & C echelons. The C & C system forms organizational-technical levels on the basis of functional levels, the former possessing organizational-technical units: C & C facilities composed of liveware, software and hardware.

Control is predominantly of organizational nature at the upper levels of the ACCS hierarchy and technological at the lower ones. The organizational control level analyzes the state of the communications system and produces variants of decisions at operational control and planning stages (including decisions on the system's deployment, restoration or buildup, on redistribution of communications channels and information flows, etc.). Technological control is about collection and initial treatment of information on arrested messages, on the state of communications lines, channels and assets, and on conveyance and realization of control actions vis-a-vis communications assets.

Apart from operational efficiency in dealing with the above tasks, the automatic communications control must meet a number of stringent requirements arising from such characteristics of the system as its complexity, big size, territorial distribution, structural dynamism, and scarcity of resources for its construction.

The activities of ACCS officers are directly connected with: accumulation and treatment of information about the system and counteraction assets; distribution of material and intellectual resources; analyzing (forecasting) the system's state and deciding on a change (synthesis) in its structure, parameters and elements; evaluation of an installed system's attributes against the background of forecasted or actual weapon action, radio communications intelligence and EW, as well as hardware failures. These tasks cannot be tackled by the formal reasoning methods alone.

Despite the existence of automatic communications assets (data communication channels, complexes and systems) and broad-scale computerization, man's main functions (to wit, those performed by officers of communications control agencies) connected with the preparation and taking of control-related decisions are still without the necessary support and lack appropriate automatic assets. But those functions cannot be executed with efficiency and good quality unless assisted by new information technologies (NIT), considering the demands placed on the communications system control, the huge number of diverse elements, the extreme complexity of ties between them, and the dynamism of exchanges involving grown amounts of information.

This is why the ACCS intellectualization strategy consists in developing and promoting efficient NITs that will secure real-time closure of the organizational and technological communications control cycles. They will also substantially enhance the validity and coordination of decisions taken by officers. In the short term, the goal of naval communications control intellectualization is developing an ACS for communications, which will utilize such technologies as distributed processing and remote monitoring ("manager-agent" architecture, "client-server" technology to control communications devices and complexes), with broad reliance on diverse intellectual systems (IS), geoinformation systems, navigation and identification systems, knowledge repositories, and others.

Based on advances in knowledge engineering, programming and microchip technology, IS are the key element in Navy ACCS intellectualization. It is they that will have a considerable impact on chances to control the Navy's communications system (they will ease the discrepancies between the growing information flows and the human capability to process them, will use the required controlling knowledge, etc.), both automating the onerous routine work and giving support to intellectual specialist activities (Fig. 1).

A very important thing in this connection, particularly in view of the current information confrontation, is to develop and employ IS in the Navy's ACCS, specifically subject-oriented expert systems that raise communications system control to a qualitatively new level. These systems play an exceptional role where the training of new specialists is concerned.

Currently, however, there is a number of factors affecting the development and utilization of IS in the Navy ACCS. First, an inadequate level of automation of such processes as information collection, telling, conversion and processing; the same applies to supporting decision-making within the communications control system, something that undercuts backing for the growing demands the modern warfare places on communications where control of forces and weapons is involved. Second, a certain organizational and system-technical disorganization of functional subsystems and networks within the Navy's ACCS takes place (in terms of types of information conveyed, designation, etc.). Third, we are yet to achieve the agendas envisaging the mating, interaction and stage-by-stage integration with the automatic systems controlling the Navy's forces, RF AF ACCS, the system controlling the interlinked communications network of the Russian Federation, and communications systems and networks run by other ministries and agencies, this in order to create Russia's unified information space. Fourth, the organizational principles and communications control automation hardware and software used by the Navy's communications systems are not standardized, this threatening to break command and control cycles. Fifth, state-of-the-art communications control automation techniques are practically absent from or are available in insufficient amounts in the everyday activities of communications control officers at different levels. Sixth, the application domain of the Navy ACCS as a sphere of military activity is inadequately provided with fitting methods and assets of knowledge engineering.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The aforesaid factors substantially complicate IS development and ACCS intellectualization as a whole. Therefore, the instruments that are usually employed to create commercial IS are not enough to develop and construct subject-oriented IS for the Navy ACCS. The lack of an appropriate theoretical foundation for the construction of IS for such application domains complicates the matter even more.

The knowledge base (Fig. 2) is the main element (nucleus, nexus) in any IS, concentrating, in a fashion convenient for a specialist, all the necessary information (contents of printed editions and manuscripts, informal knowledge, expert experience, etc.). Effective application of subject-oriented IS to naval communications control is impossible without this kind of base relevant to the tasks of conserving the accumulated experience. (2)

Knowledge base development should take into account a number of aspects: theoretical, organizational, psychological, technological and instrumental.

The theoretical aspect. Knowledge engineering is the theoretical basis of Navy ACCS intellectualization. Evolving as a scientific discipline, it took in methods of different sciences, primarily logic, psychology, cybernetics and computer science (informatics). But, given the lack of a clear-cut, established foundation of its own, that array of diverse and heterogeneous methods turns into a serious impediment for efforts to develop a knowledge base for the Navy ACCS. In this connection, an exceptionally important part attaches to the choice of a single methodological platform to underlie the use of specialized knowledge engineering methods. Originally knowledge is the personal property of a totally concrete communications specialist, who acquired it in the process of individual activities controlling the Navy's communications system. Much effort is needed to process this knowledge to a state where it becomes an appropriate computer image, to wit, knowledge base.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

As is evident from the endeavor to develop a knowledge base for the Navy ACCS, the system approach may serve as such single methodological platform. Being, along with methodology of control and methodology of information sign representations, a component element of the package of fundamental system-cybernetic knowledge, it enables a resort to powerful system theory methods for the purpose of developing a knowledge base for the Navy's ACCS.

The organizational aspect. As is evident, it is impossible to develop a knowledge base for the Navy ACCS unless we draw on the necessary resources. For this reason, the initial stage is where participants in the knowledge base development process and their roles are identified, as are other required resources. The former component is about outlining the number of specialists necessary to draw up a knowledge base and forms of relations between them. Some other typical required resources are sources of knowledge, development time (timeframes), tools, and amounts of funding.

Identifying the resources is quite important, for any component, if in short supply, will affect the development of the knowledge base for the Navy's ACCS. An even more important matter is to organize effective utilization of the available resources.

As a rule, a knowledge base is developed by an organized group of specialists, which includes the customer or his representatives, users, experts, knowledge engineers, system analysts and programmers.

Each participant either performs one role (for example, that of a knowledge engineer) or combines several ones (such as knowledge engineer and system analyst). The group's quantitative and qualitative composition varies subject to goals and complexity of the development process.

The psychological aspect. The significance of psychological factors is a distinct peculiarity of knowledge engineering as a science. Knowledge-based systems must be easy to handle, that is, represent personnel-friendly jobs susceptible to efficient, safe and relaxed operation by the staff of naval communications control facilities. So, the anthropocentric approach is the dominant approach to knowledge base development, its principal aim being to meet the interests and requirements the customer and users may have in relation of the Navy's ACCS. Psychological comfort in this case is achieved through the development of an appropriate "friendly interface" and "transparency" of the knowledge base. The "friendly interface" implies representation and displaying of knowledge in a manner found habitual by communications specialists engaged in performance of their functions: it enables them to handle knowledge easily despite the complexity of its structure. This interface should be translated into the professional language of communications and use diverse conventional symbols. In addition, the Navy's ACCS must make skillful use of different ergonomic data representation and displaying techniques (such as color, sound, shape, size, inclination angle, flicker frequency, etc.).

The technological aspect. Developing a knowledge base for the Navy ACCS is a complicated and laborious process, which normally proceeds stage by stage. The designing stage is when one should have some idea about the would-be knowledge base. For that it is necessary to develop a prototypical knowledge base, to wit, its "truncated" version intended to demonstrate viability and capabilities of the chosen approach, as well as to check and verify the correctness of formalization, realization and utilization of knowledge. Prototyping affects all stages of knowledge base development, and the divides between them are, characteristically, rather relative. This tends to dilute the clarity of tasks at each stage and substantially complicates the work to assure the needed technological level of naval ACCS prototype. It is of exceptional importance, therefore, to identify clearly, even before the prototyping begins, into how many stages knowledge base development ought to be divided, what these stages should be about, and how (with the help of what means) to secure the construction of a relevant knowledge base with regard for organic resource restrictions.

The instrumental aspect. Development of a knowledge base for the Navy's ACCS cannot proceed without appropriately chosen or specially developed instruments. There is neither a tested technology nor an established set of development assets for an application domain such as the Navy's ACCS. For this reason it is necessary to create or adapt the existing tools, primarily methodological and information support instruments, with due regard for the characteristic features of the application domain.

Specifically, to identify and extract knowledge in the process of interaction between a knowledge engineer and experts or other sources, methods and ways must be developed, which make it possible to assume with a high degree of certainty that the knowledge thus obtained adequately reflects the specific processes whereby a concrete assignment in the naval ACCS area yields results. These methods may be constructed on the basis of modern advances in interviewing and information documenting.

One must stress in conclusion that ACCS is mostly designed to process huge flows of diverse information to support analytical activities pursued by the command and command and control agencies at different levels. This was not evident well enough until recently, with resources intended for such systems mostly diverted to improve data collection, enhance hardware reliability, and upgrade weapon systems. Later it was realized that artificial intellect technology, accumulation and utilization of knowledge would have much influence on computer systems, the basis of data processing in control and communications area, as they would on higher natural intellectual capabilities of decision-makers.

NOTES:

1. See: N.F. Directorov et al., Avtomatizatsiya upravleniya i szyaz'. VMF, Elmor Publishers, St. Petersburg, 1998.

2. See: Yu. V. Gaikovich, V.V. Deyev, B.V. Tarasov, Intellektual'nyye informatsionnye sistemy, Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1994; G.A. Velichko, S.L. Kaganovich, I.V. Kuznetsov, Osnovy proyektirovaniya ekspertnykh sistem, Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1994.

Vice-Admiral A.G. DOLBNYA

Capt. 1st Rank S.A. GAVRILENKO

Col. Yu.M. ISKANDEROV

Candidate of Technical Sciences