The Network is the Battlefield

Now this is network-centric warfare. The Defense Department not only wants networks to provide better information on the enemy to fight future battles, it wants computers to help figure out how to fight the battles. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) released a Broad Agency Announcement, in which DARPA says it is looking for a system, dubbed "Deep Green," that is:

composed of tools to help the commander rapidly generate courses of action (options) through multimodal sketch and speech recognition technologies. Deep Green will develop technologies to help the commander create courses of action (options), fill in details for the commander, evaluate the options, develop alternatives, and evaluate the impact of decisions on other parts of the plan. The permutations of these option sketches for all sides and forces are assembled and passed to a new kind of combat model which generates many qualitatively different possible futures. These possible futures are organized into a graph-like structure. The commander can explore the space of possible futures, conducting “what-if” drills and generating branch and sequel options. Deep Green will take information from the ongoing, current operation to estimate the likelihood that the various possible futures may occur. Using this information, Deep Green will prune futures that are becoming very improbable and ask the commander to generate options for futures that are becoming more likely. In this way, Deep Green will ensure that the commander rarely reaches a point in the operation at which he has no options. This will keep the enemy firmly inside our decision cycle.

An image from the Broad Agency Announcement

Hat tip: The Register