The Battlefield Command Support System (BCSS) is a digital Command Support System developed by Saab for the Australian Army. BCSS enhances combat power by providing an efficient and effective means of managing and distributing information on the battlefield. It provides commanders with critical information such as location and combat readiness of own forces, enemy strengths and intentions, environmental conditions, mobility, terrain and intervisibility.

Functionality

BCSS is a fully field deployable, scalable system that provides near real time situational awareness and messaging across a wide range of communications bearers including Combat Net Radio, Local Area Networks, Wide Area Networks, satellite and point-to-point serial links. BCSS has been engineered from its foundation to accommodate the very restricted bandwidths available in today’s combat net radio systems, whilst at the same time being able to take full advantage of the higher bandwidths available in Local and Wide Area Networks.

The primary BCSS functions are:

• Battlemap Situational Awareness including GPS based positioning.
• Terrain Analysis functions, both Two and Three dimensional.
• Military Communications, with structured message formats over a variety of in service high and low capacity links.
• Engineering Support functions, including going analysis and route planning.
• Operational Planning tools for the generation of plans, orders and briefing materials, customisable to the end user’s doctrine,
• Logistic Support and Capability Status tools to calculate logistics requirements and record and highlight the status of all units under command, and
• Intelligence databases and tools for analysis, recording and reporting.

BCSS provides a flexible information flow with integrated functionality throughout all stages of an operation. Near real time situational awareness overlays combined with operational status updates feeding the mission and logistics-planning cycle gives commanders an unprecedented level of battlefield information.

BCSS is inherently capable of growth to include additional functionality, a greater number of hardware platforms and to operate at lower formation levels. BCSS is also able, through its system design, to have the user interface readily tailored to suit user requirements.

BCSS supports the military appreciation process by enabling planners to conduct collaborative planning for current and future operations. The periodic Staff briefs required for the commander during the planning process are automatically populated by BCSS from the planning data input. At the appropriate time, commanders can pass their orders to subordinates via BCSS Messaging in graphic or text based messages. During the conduct of an operation, BCSS continues to support the war-fighter with a range of specialist tools such as engineering support and Intelligence databases for the temporal and spatial analysis of key events

Standards and Formats

BCSS uses worldwide standards and formats to facilitate interoperability and enable the rapid integration of new requirements or legacy systems. These standards include

• MIL-STD 2525B symbology
• IRIS mission file
• USMTF, ASMTF and VMF Message formats
• ESRI compatible vector and raster map data
• SQL compliance
• Ethernet, MIL-STD_188-114 (CNR), serial (EIA-232), NMEA & PLGR GPS

Architecture

BCSS is hosted on the Saab Information Framework which provides a robust, multi-layered data framework that publishes, shares and routes information in a peer-to-peer network environment. It is an open and flexible architecture that a variety of applications and adaptors plug in to. The framework also enables object persistence and information storage. The Saab Information Framework supports common programming languages to enable rapid, evolutionary development to specific user requirements.

The Framework is hosted on the industry standard Microsoft Windows operating system, providing security, a high degree of user familiarity and the ability to host an array of supporting software.

BCSS Status

BCSS has been in service with the Australian Army since 1999 and is in operational use with the 1st and 3rd Brigades, located in Darwin (Australia’s Northern Territory) and Townsville (Queensland, Australia). BCSS has also been in service on peacekeeping operations in East Timor since 2000. The current release of BCSS (Release 7.0) is deployed from Divisional Headquarters to Company Level Headquarters and a derivative system is being trialled for Platoon use.

The system is being evaluated by the New Zealand Defence Force as part of the future NZ Joint Command and Control System, and is also under consideration by South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the UAE.