the Future Combat System Environment

The U.S. Army is faced with the challenge of dramatically improving its war fighting capability through advanced technologies. The focus of this paper is to assess the novelty and maturity of agent technology for use in the Future Combat System (FCS). FCS will rely on networked command and control (C2) to transform from the historically centralized C2 function. Achieving a networked C2 capability will require breakthroughs in current software technology. We have developed a set of software requirements for FCS based on military requirements for this system. We have then evaluated these software requirements against current computer science technology. From this analysis we find that existing technologies will not likely be sufficient to meet the networked C2 requirements of FCS due to limitations in scalability, mobility, and security. However, agent technology provides a number of advantages in these areas, mainly through much stronger messaging and coordination models. These advantages have the potential for significant improvements in scalability, mobility, and security. We believe that agent technolog