The DoD Ontology Gap - Applications of Agent Technology in the Military Mr. Dale W. Richards Mr. Mark Gorniak Air Force Research Laboratory Air Force Research Laboratory 525 Brooks Rd 525 Brooks Rd Rome NY 13441 Rome NY 13441 (315) 330-3014 (315) 330-7724 richardsd@rl.af.mil gorniakm@rl.af.mil ABSTRACT are addressing many of the basic architecture and integration This position paper describes ontology issues important to the issues, but have only scratched the surface of the semantic aspects fielding of military agent-based systems. of these systems. The DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) program has made a good start in this direction; but new information systems, presumably agent-based, being proposed General Terms must be ontologically aware and compatible from the beginning. Management, Design, Standardization, Languages, Verification. The DoD has made a strong push in some quarters for increased Keywords emphasis on the use of XML and the related tagging of data. This Ontology, Military, Information Systems, Intelligent Agents. has not always been accompanied by a clear understanding that there is more to the task than simply tagging everything in sight. 1. POSITION Properly tagged data is seen as the key to efficient information The vision for future military information systems often includes and knowledge retrieval across multiple, and often dynamic, data the integration of a vast number of existing heterogeneously and knowledge sources. Tagging must go beyond text to imagery developed information sources to obtain a “big picture” view of and other media as well as more exotic data types such as global events. The desire is to have a system of systems which is recorded waveforms and other scientific data sets. Real-time dynamic in its configuration and owned by players from distinct automated tagging, and retrieval, is also desired. political, geographic and service-specific units. However, there are many unresolved issues relating to this use of The reality of today is that many military information systems are semantically aware agent technology in larger military systems: often stood up in conjunction with a particular mission or theatre 1. How to bring ontological awareness to specifiers and of operations and involve the forced integration of "legacy" and developers of military systems? "stovepiped" systems. Traditional software integration methods are used to stitch together existing (legacy) systems either on a 2. How ontologically heterogeneous can new systems be, one-to-one basis or via common, often overconstraining, and still be integrated into larger systems-of-systems? data/interface standards. Heavyweight, often long in development How scaleable is the incorporation of additional and outdated upon delivery, have become a de facto result. ontologies? Operators of these systems continue to look to technology to make 3. How to efficiently incorporate legacy systems, including those systems more responsive, less costly, more automated the tagging of legacy data, into newer systems, and (autonomous) and requiring of less staffing systems of systems, which are ontologically friendly? 4. How to move the processes of ontology definition and Future command and control (C2) systems are often described as data markup from an art to a science via rigorous containing hundreds or thousands of active, autonomous methodologies? And thence to common practice via a information components working with an even larger number of robust, established software engineering/programming operational or engaged "fighting" units. The attainment of this paradigm? goal is usually predicated on the development of a new class of 5. Will ontologies be defined/managed by programmers or information system - clearly heterogeneous, often loosely coupled operators? And what will be their tools of choice? - by policy or necessity, and most likely distributed - the same 6. How to quantify the amount of resources, e.g., labor robust qualities promised by autonomous agents. hours, calendar time, level of expertise, etc.; needed to create ontologies and to mark up data sources (including On going work in the area of agent infrastructure, e.g., DARPA validation)? Control of Agent Based Systems (CoABS), and other programs ***