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Formalizing Battle Management Language : A Grammar for Specifying Orders

Battle Management Language (BML) is being developed as an open standard that unambiguously specifies Command and Control information, including orders and reports built upon precise representations of tasks. BML is both a methodology and a language specification, based on doctrine and consistent with Coalition standards. Recent work has concentrated on leveraging standard data model semantics (particularly the Command and Control Information Exchange Data Model) for a Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) Coalition BML (C-BML) specification. While current BML work has organized task representations around the Command and Control Information Exchange Data Model and the 5 Ws (WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and WHY), the grammar is implicit rather than explicit. Development of a formal grammar is necessary for the specification of a complete language. Formalizing BML by defining its grammar should follow the conventions determined by the theory of Linguistics. Initially, it must be determined which type of grammar is to be used. The Chomsky hierarchy specifies that grammars can be Type 0 (unrestricted grammars), Type 1 (context-sensitive grammars), Type 2 (context-free grammars) or Type 3 (regular grammars). While humans typically use a more expressive grammar (Type 1 or Type 2), automated processing is best supported by a more constrained one (Type 2 or Type 3). Our analysis indicates that a Type 2 grammar best fits the requirements for a BML. To specify a BML grammar, rules must be developed to determine how to create valid BML sentences that describe military tasks. An analysis of US and German Army 5-paragraph orders shows that a pure 5W based grammar can neither cope with all of the expressions needed, nor exclude all sentences that violate our intuition of “correctness”. Therefore, rules for BML sentences will require additional and more detailed semantics such that a verb (the 5W’s WHAT) determines a structure (expressed as a “frame”) for the sentence. This verb frame will then reference the other Ws and additional terms. Rules for the concatenation of BML sentences in our grammar will be guided by NATO STANAG 2014 – “Formats for Orders and Designations of Timings, Locations and Boundaries”. In this paper we propose an initial BML grammar that formalizes the construction of valid BML sentences as well as their concatenation to form military orders. This is illustrated by an example from an Army Order from a Multinational Interoperability Program (MIP) Exercise. We also address the use of this BML grammar in automated systems. Future work includes 1) developing the grammar to express relationships between verbs; 2) further specifying how to concatenate BML sentences; and 3) adding a third class of C2 information to be represented by BML – requests. 1. Need for Formalizing Task Representations in Military Domains The purpose of this paper is to propose a formalization of Battle Management Language (BML) by developing a grammar based upon Linguistic theory. The concept and need for a BML are well documented [1, 7, 10, 23]. To date, BML has defined an approach to resolving ambiguity by leveraging certain existing standards (such as the Command and Control Data Exchange Information Model – the C2IEDM). However, a formal grammar has not been designed, although the need for it has been identified [1]. To be clear about our intent, we view a BML grammar as a subset of a more generic task representation language. We will call this generic language Operational Tasking Language (OTL). While the semantics of a military task have unique aspects, we hypothesize that the syntax is general for a certain class of “Operations” that we define as “a planned activity involving many people performing various actions” [24]. This is similar to the notion of “Action” in the C2IEDM, where an Action is “An activity, or the occurrence of an activity, that may utilize resources and may be focused against an objective.” Our approach to a BML grammar, therefore, is to base it on formal Linguistic theory and design it to be applicable to military, peacekeeping, police and fire operations, industrial operations and other general uses. While we realize that the grammar presented here will require review and revision prior to standardization, we hope that this proposal will be a positive contribution to the formalization of BML. In a general sense, an OTL grammar would be the same as the BML grammar but the specifics of semantics, lexicon and production rules would be different for different domains. Thus an OTL could be specified for disaster relief using a different set of missions and using a different semantics than the C2IEDM. BML will be useful to the extent that it becomes a standardized “language” that not only has general standards for what should be in an order, but also provides the means for automated systems to distinguish between missions. Currently a human can specify a mission using a C2 system, but the system then only has the name of the mission and some very simple relationships. BML will add “meaning” to the mission by defining parameters that will characterize and distinguish the mission. To clarify the terms used in the BML grammar we give the following definitions: Order A tasking assigned by a superior to a subordinate consisting of one or more tasks Task Activity assigned by a superior Activity A specific (often skilled) behavior For completeness, we will briefly introduce the BML concept and give a brief update as to the various organizations involved in defining BML.