Selecting a Military Computer Architecture

Selecting or even designing a computer architecture is at best as much a black art as a science. The problem is particularly difficult when one tries to choose an architecture meant to serve a very broad range of users whose present and future requirements are poorly understood. This article describes the activities of a joint Army/Navy Selection Committee, which was charged with the task of selecting a single computer architecture to be used as the basis for a new military computer family. The range of applications for military computers is broad and ill defined; how the committee tried to cope with this problem should be of interest to others who are interested in measuring, designing, or selecting computer architectures.     

VLISP: A verified implementation of Scheme

The VLISP project showed how to produce a comprehensively verified implementation for a programming language, namely Scheme. This paper introduces two more detailed studies on VLISP [13, 21]. It summarizes the basic techniques that were used repeatedly throughout the effort. It presents scientific conclusions about the applicability of the these techniques as well as engineering conclusions about the crucial choices that allowed the verification to succeed.The work reported here was carried out as part of The MITRE Corporation's Technology Program, under funding from Rome Laboratory, Electronic Systems Command, United States Air Force, through contract F19628-89-C-0001. Preparation of this paper was generously supported by The MITRE Corporation. Mitchell Wand's participation was partly supported by NSF and DARPA under NSF grants CCR-9002253 and CCR-9014603.     

The VLISP verified Scheme system

The VLISP project has produced a rigorously verified compiler from Scheme to byte codes, and a verified interpreter for the resulting byte codes. The official denotational semantics for Scheme provides the main criterion of correctness. The Wand-Clinger technique was used to prove correctness of the primary compiler step. Then a state machine operational semantics is proved to be faithful to the denotational semantics. The remainder of the implementation is verified by a succession of state machine refinement proofs. These include proofs that garbage collection is a sound implementation strategy, and that a particular garbage collection algorithm is correct.The work reported here was carried out as part of The MITRE Corporation's Technology Program, under funding from Rome Laboratory, Electronic Systems Command, United States Air Force, through contract F19628-89-C-0001. Preparation of this paper was generously supported by The MITRE Corporation.     

Solution of sparse positive definite systems on a shared-memory multiprocessor

Algorithms and software for solving sparse symmetric positive definite systems on serial computers have reached a high state of development. In this paper, we present algorithms for performing sparse Cholesky factorization and sparse triangular solutions on a shared-memory multiprocessor computer, along with some numerical experiments demonstrating their performance on a Sequent Balance 8000 system.Research was supported by the Applied Mathematical Sciences Research Program of the Office of Energy Research, U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-84OR21400 with Martin Marieta Energy Systems, Inc., by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research under contract AFOSR-ISSA-85-00083 and by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council under grants A8111 and A5509.     

面向通信与指挥军事建模框架研究

军事建模框架是军事仿真研发过程中提出并运用的重要概念。鉴于我国军事通信与指挥的实际情况,提出了支持仿真模型集成及多分辨率模型的面向通信与指挥的军事建模框架(MMFOC2),设计了仿真模型体系的功能区分及分类体系,用实例说明了运用该建模框架进行作战仿真的基本流程,结果表明该模型及方法对于战术仿真系统建模是十分有效的。     

军事领域计算机对抗

主要讨论在军事领域中的计算机对抗概念、特点、实施方法，并提出了作者对开展计算机对抗在军事领域的应用研究的四点看法。     

Architectural design of a common operating environment

The Global Command and Control System is the next generation replacement for the legacy World Wide Military Command and Control System, which has served the command and control needs of several high level US military commands for more than 20 years. The GCCS is implemented on heterogeneous Unix workstations as opposed to the WWMCCS's mainframe implementation. The GCCS will eventually extend down to tactical levels of command and control not encompassed by the earlier system. For this and other reasons, the Defense Information Systems Agency is undertaking the architectural design of the new GCCS common operating environment. The architecture for the Global Command and Control System's new common operating environment will comprise several modern architectural concepts currently used in complex, distributed systems. We plan to reduce the environment's complexity by using architectural components supported by existing commercial products and standards     

Innovation in the US Military

A case example is provided of a successful innovation initiative within the United States Air Force, and specifically within its Electronic Security Command, 1984–1992. Guidelines were developed from Pinchot's ‘rules of intrapreneurs’. Ideas were worked up into projects in Long Range Innovation Teams. The resistance to new ideas was considerably weakened because of top-down commitment to change. Eventually over 13,000 personnel became involved. Rewards systems were designed in accord with the principles of reinforcing intrinsic motivation through recognition.     

Computer Espionage

Philip HunterIndustrial espionage has long been big business, and now costs US companies over $100 billion a year according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With economic warfare replacing military conflict among the world’s leading industrial nations, industrial espionage also operates increasingly between countries, with the US a particular target as the global leader in many technologies. Increasingly computers are involved in all this activity, either as the means of attack, or as the medium for transferring the stolen information.     

浅谈计算机与军事信息战

了军事信息战的概念及其基本特征，说明了计算机是未来军事信息战中的核心与支柱，以及计算机病毒的对抗，最后指出了军事信息的成慑效果。     

高性能计算机曙光4000A的网格使能特征

网格计算的理想是实现基于Internet的资源共享和协同工作，是Internel．继WWW后的又一个发展浪潮．高性能计算机(超级服务器)是网格中主要的共享资源提供者，而网格也必将成为高性能计算机的主要应用环境．因此网格成为推动高性能计算机发展的一个重要因素，高性能计算机研制中必须考虑网格的需求，并提供必要的支持．曙光4000A是由中国科学院计算技术研究所最新研制的面向网格的高性能计算机，该系统的研制得到国家“八六三”高技术研究发展计划的支持，并作为中国国家网格的主节点部署在上海超级计算中心．详细论述了曙光4000A系统中主要的网格使能特征，这些特征从体系结构、系统硬件和软件方面对网格提供了支持，是从高性能计算机研制角度对网格使能技术进行的积极探索和尝试．     

Optimal positioning of combined mobile platform-manipulator systems for material handling tasks

Mobile manipulators are attracting significant interest in the industrial, military, and public service communities because of the potential they provide for increased efficiency in material handling and manipulation tasks. Corresponding interest has arisen in the robotics research community since the combination and coordination of the mobility of an autonomous platform with the robotic motion of a manipulator introduce complex analytical problems. One such problem arises from the particular kinematic redundancy which characterizes practical mobile manipulators. This paper is concerned with a particular aspect of the resolution of this redundancy, which is its utilization to optimize the system's position and configuration during task commutations when changes occur in both task requirements and task constraints. Basic optimization schemes are developed for cases when load and position constraints are applied at the end-effector. Various optimization criteria are investigated for task requirements including obstacle avoidance, maneuverability and several torque functions. The problem of optimally positioning the platform for execution of a manipulation task requiring a given reach is also treated. Emphasis is then placed on the multi-criteria optimization methods which are necessary to calculate the commutation configurations in sequences of tasks with varying requirements. Sample results are presented for a system involving a three-link planar manipulator on a mobile platform. The various optimization schemes are discussed and compared, and several directions (in particular the novel use of minimax optimization pioneered here for redundancy resolution) are outlined for further extensions of the methods to the general problem of motion planning and control of redundant robotic systems with combined mobility and manipulation capabilities.Research sponsored by the Engineering Research Program of the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy, under contract No. DE-AC05-84OR21400 with Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc. and by the Advanced Concept and Technology Program of the U.S. Army Material Command under Interagency Agreement No. 1495-CO92-A1 between the Human Engineering Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy.     

Commercial Speech Recognition Technology in the Military Domain: Results of Two Recent Research Efforts

While speech recognition technology has long held the potential for improving the effectiveness of military operations, it has only been within the last several years that speech systems have enabled the realization of that potential. Commercial speech recognition technology developments aimed at improving robustness for automotive and cellular phone applications have capabilities that can be exploited in various military systems. This paper discusses the results of two research efforts directed toward applying commercial-off-the-shelf speech recognition technology in the military domain. The first effort discussed is the development and evaluation of a speech recognition interface to the Theater Air Planning system responsible for the generation of air tasking orders in a military Air Operations Center. The second effort examined the utility of speech versus conventional manual input for tasks performed by operators in an unmanned aerial vehicle control station simulator. Both efforts clearly demonstrate the military benefits obtainable from the proper application of speech technology.     

谈网络环境下的军校教学

随着计算机的日益普及以及军队院校网络教学应用系统的推广使用,信息技术在军队院校教学中的全面应用已成为现实,对教、学双方产生了重要影响,促使教学真正向研究式、开放式、自主式发展.本文以网络环境为背景,主要分析了军队院校网络教学应用系统对教学观念带来的影响,探讨了网络环境下教学模式的多样性以及教、学员如何应对这种变化所带来的冲击与挑战.     

The Computer Family Architecture Project: Service Perspectives and Overview

Standardization of digital computers used in tactical military systems has many potential benefits-simplification of training and logistics, economy in production, and reduced software development costs, to name a few. To realize these benefits, the Army-Navy Computer Family Architecture (CFA) Project seeks to define a family of military computers at varied levels of performance, software-compatible with each other and with an existing, successful computer. Such a family would overcome the difficulties encountered with past military standard computers, which have not generally been compatible in this way. Suppliers of the new family would be free to introduce new technology and new concepts of implementation, consistent with the specifications of the family. Thus, standardization on an existing instruction set architecture offers advantages beyond those conferred by standardization on a number of incompatible black boxes.     

Computer security

A strong factor in the early development of computers was security – the computations that motivated their development, such as decrypting intercepted messages, generating gunnery tables, and developing weapons, had military applications. But the computers themselves were so big and so few that they were relatively easy to protect simply by limiting physical access to them to their programmers and operators. Today, computers have shrunk so that a web server can be hidden in a matchbox and have become so common that few people can give an accurate count of the number they have in their homes and automobiles, much less the number they use in the course of a day. Computers constantly communicate with one another; an isolated computer is crippled. The meaning and implications of “computer security” have changed over the years as well. This paper reviews major concepts and principles of computer security as it stands today. It strives not to delve deeply into specific technical areas such as operating system security, access control, network security, intrusion detection, and so on, but to paint the topic with a broad brush. Published online: 27 July 2001     

Structure of aura and co-occurrence matrices for the Gibbs texture model

The aura matrix of an image indicates how much of each gray level is present in the neighborhood of each other gray level and generalizes the popular texture-analysis tool, the co-occurrence matrix. In this paper we show that interesting structure appears in both the aura and co-occurrence matrices for textures that are synthesized from Gibbs random-field models. We derive this structure by characterizing configurations of the distribution that are most likely to be synthesized when the Gibbs energy is minimized. This minimization is an important part of applications that use the Gibbs model within a Bayesian estimation framework for maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation. In particular, we show that the aura matrix will become tridiagonal for an attractive autobinomial field when suitable constraints exist on the histogram, neighborhood, and image sizes. Under the same constraints, but where the field is repulsive instead of attractive, the matrix will become antitridiagonal. The interpretation of this structure is especially significant for modeling textures with minimum-energy configurations: zeros in the matrix prohibit certain colors from occurring next to each other, thus prohibiting large classes of textures from being formed.This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under grant MIP-88-14612, the National Science Foundation under grant IRI-8719920, and the Rome Air Development Center of the U.S. Air Force Systems Command and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under contract F30602-89-C-0022.     

实施CMM提高军用加固机软件产品质量

介绍了CMM（软件过程能力成熟度模型）的基本概念和五级分级结构。并根据已实施CMM管理的企业的经验提出了对军用加固机嵌入式软件、应用层软件开发过程进行控制,以改进软件过程,提高软件质量的方法。     

On interprocess communication

A formalism for specifying and reasoning about concurrent systems is described. Unlike more conventional formalisms, it is not based upon atomic actions. A definition of what it means for one system to implement a higher-level system is given and justified. In Part II, the formalism is used to specify several classes of interprocess communication mechanisms and to prove the correctness of algorithms for implementing them. Dr. Lamport is a member of Digital Equipment Corporation's Systems Research Center. In previous incarnations, he was with SRI International and Massachusetts Computer Associates. The central topic of his research has been concurrency, and he can writeTEX macros and chew gum at the same time.Much of this research was performed while the author was a member of the Computer Science Laboratory at SRI International, where it was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research Project under contract number N00014-84-C-0621 and the Rome Air Development Command Project under contract number F30602-85-C-0024     

Mathematical model of IRIS replication mechanism for the simulation of tactical networks

The Multilateral Interoperability Programme (MIP) was established to promote more successful and better harmonized operational functions for international peace-keeping forces. The C2IEDM/JC3IEDM (Command and Control Information Exchange Data Model) ensures the interconnection of Command and Control Information Systems (C2ISs) throughout all levels, from the corps down to the lower ranks. The usability of C2ISs highly correlates with the capacities of data information carriers, and the need is growing for greater capacity and reliability of transmission media and cryptographic message security. Simulation of tactical networks is an important task in planning military missions. Such methodologies assure a higher probability of success during critical tactical operations. This article focuses on a new radio network modeling method for the C2IS, which is verified by the OPNET simulation environment. This modeling method can be used in tactical radio network planning and optimization processes.