A Framework for the Automation of Air Defence Systems

The need for more efficiency in military organizations is growing. It is expected that a significant increase in efficiency can be obtained by an integration of communication and information technology. This integration may result in (sub)systems that are fully automated, i.e., systems that are unmanned, including unmanned vehicles. In this paper, we focus on the automation of air defence systems, in which integration of communication and information technology is a major issue. We propose an architecture, in which each weapon system has the capability to control itself, whilst acting in a co-ordinated manner with other systems. To realise this task, a weapon system is exactly informed about the activities of all other weapon systems. In our architecture, the role of the men is reduced to the supervision of weapon systems.