During a Phase II Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) project for the Navy, we developed a prototype agent-based system called METPLAN. The system is designed to increase the effectiveness of PGMs by automatically integrating environmental data and weapon-specific and mission-specific environmental effects into the mission planning process. The METPLAN prototype consists of a Core agent and Operator software agents. The Core is written in Java and is responsible for retrieving and managing (including archiving for post mortem) the environmental data from local and remote sources. The Core makes use of an “intelligent cache” that provides management of local data requests to minimize the amount of reachback performed for each data retrieval independent of the number and types of platforms and weapons in the plan. Each Operator agent is responsible for interfacing with the end-user, managing data requirements and requests, monitoring end-user mission planning and providing displays (within the Portable Flight Planning System, PFPS). We focused Operator agent design toward the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) using an open COM architecture that could be modified for any weapon or platform. The weapon-specific and mission-specific displays from the Operator agent detail environmental impacts on mission plan success. For example, instead of displaying wind data as a graphical overlay on a JSOW route (e.g., Joint METOC Viewer), METPLAN displays a red/yellow/green JSOW route based on the amount of range lost or gained by head- or tailwinds over the course of the missile flight. METPLAN also allows the end-user to “drill-down” into the data by clicking on any point on FalconView to retrieve the winds, temperature, etc. By automatically providing environmental impacts on the mission, while providing drill-down capability for further details, METPLAN increases the amount of information available to the mission planner without increasing the amount of time required to plan the mission.

METPLAN responds to user preferences for
weather data, updates

METPLAN generates a color overlay of weather conditions
on the planned route