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About Horizontal Fusion

As an award-winning effort consistent with the goals and guidance for military transformation, Horizontal Fusion has been organized to focus technology on the information-sharing challenges of net-centric warfare and to demonstrate innovation and benefit quickly. Horizontal Fusion goes far beyond demonstration of interoperating systems. Its goal is to prove ready access to relevant information at the right time to support more informed decisions.

Horizontal Fusion has won NCW awards for three consecutive years

Horizontal Fusion deploys web-services to leverage existing and emerging technologies in a secure environment. It assures user-focused information sharing, information fusion, sense making (of complex and ambiguous situations), and decision making by coalition forces in a world of asymmetric conflict.

Horizontal Fusion is a direct response to the need to extend and optimize technology and operations to achieve "Power to the Edge". Horizontal Fusion supports the discovery of and access to the right information, at the right time, by the right people regardless of mission. It has successfully demonstrated the value of a services oriented architecture in a secure environment:

• Catalyst for Net-Centricity
• Platform for Information Sharing
• Decision Superiority
• Support for Dynamic Communities of Interest
• Improved Information Relevance
• Services Oriented Architecture
• Discoverable Services
• Secure Collaboration in a Coalition Scenario
• Security and Accreditation

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By itself a network of systems provides no indication of what resources are available or how to deal with or interpret what information is found. In almost any practical scenario, the risk of important information having to pass through too many hands or being obscured by the large volume of unrelated but available detail is quite high.

The essence of net-centricity is information sharing with an emphasis on immediacy and relevance in support of dynamic communities of interest. Horizontal Fusion has acted as a technology catalyst within the Department of Defense, accelerating the process of understanding and adoption. Read more about net-centricity . . .

Horizontal Fusion provides a foundation for effective information sharing through a framework of standards for interoperation. Portfolio management helps preserve legacy investments and focuses technology effort around the persistent availability of information rather than the perpetual replacement of systems. Time frames in a world of asymmetric conflict are far too short to allow for adaptation or replacement of systems. The benefits of information sharing are measurable:

• - Fast access to more timely and accurate data
• - Lower probability of decision-making error and, worse, operational risk
• - Lower cost to use military force
• - More accurately targeted force/higher probability of success
• - Shorter time to mission goal; lower risk to U.S. and coalition forces.

Information sharing is a vital strategic and tactical advantage.

Decision superiority in asymmetric conflict depends on the efficient flow of relevant information among dynamic communities of interest. The events of 9/11 showed how important it is for government to better organize and coordinate in the global battlefield. Information sharing has become a vital strategic and tactical advantage, and technologies that achieve it are essential to military transformation and response to the Presidential Executive Order. Horizontal Fusion successfully demonstrates progress and lessons learned for guidance toward realizing strong value from current information assets.

The instant that situational awareness must be shared, a dynamic COI exists. Operational tempo and urgency define the informational appetite and duration or shelf life of a dynamic COI. Shared situational awareness is a way of visualizing the level of dynamic and ongoing collaboration necessary to gain informational advantage and decision superiority. A proactive ability to share information helps improve the stakes and better balances the cost and risk of asymmetric conflict.
 

Modified from Source: Net-Centric Environment Joint Functional Concept 1.0

In a net-centric environment, relevance can be defined simply as the measure of how closely information matches the user's intent for its use when it is delivered. For most operational purposes, it is appropriate to assume that the most current available information that matches the criteria is probably most relevant to the searcher's intent. This includes both unsolicited mission-related facts delivered by subscription and the results of specific searches or queries based on emerging facts and conditions.

The Department of Defense represents a distinct enterprise scenario where scale, integration, and security must all be adequately resolved to support information sharing. The technology of the semantic web helps establish a much closer connection between the data and the user's informational requirements. The semantic web represents the majority of practical possibilities by way of consensus about controlled vocabularies or ontologies.

Seizing a technological opportunity at the right strategic moment, applying it in calculated ways to gain advantage, and disrupting the equation of competition and conflict is the essence of innovation. Web services and related technologies radically improve the ability to share information in a setting where its relevance to the priorities of a dynamic Community of Interest is a key disruptive advantage in asymmetric conflict.
 

Thinking of information in terms of a services oriented architecture (SOA) allows existing systems to be preserved and leveraged through several technical innovations. A services oriented architecture provides a basic framework for information sharing among an arbitrary number of dynamic Communities of Interest. Services are simply a standard representation of content and capability that can be distributed throughout the network—their location is irrelevant—and information can travel any available communication path. Once services have been discovered, they can be combined to perform functions as composed applications.

The information-sharing environment shifts from system-centric (pushing data point to point regardless of quantity or need) to user-centric (pulling the relevant data to solve problems) when services become discoverable. The consumers of information are smarter than their sources about what they operationally need, and they should be able to locate and pull it to them. Through the use of discoverable services, resources can connect more easily with consumers of information within the timeframe of demand to support short decision cycles.

Subject matter experts from diverse units or organizations are frequently called upon to come together to make sense out of special situations. The ability to pull from within a unit as well as across the Department of Defense and the intelligence community is critical. In a coalition environment, coordinated information sharing can present special challenges because levels of trust between coalition partners can shift over time. A system of role-based access and simplified administration makes it possible for multiple forces to function as a coalition quickly and only as long as is necessary.