Command Post of the Future

The United States Army's Command Post of the Future (CPOF) is a C2 software system that allows commanders to maintain topsight over the battlefield; collaborate with superiors, peers and subordinates over live data; and communicate their intent.

Originally a DARPA technology demonstration, in 2006 CPOF became an Army Program of Record. It is managed by the Product Manager Tactical Mission Command at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland, and integrated with the Army's Maneuver Control System and other products. The prime contractor on the CPOF program is General Dynamics C4 Systems, which purchased the original developer of the software (MAYA Viz Ltd) in 2005.

CPOF began as a DARPA investigation to improve mission command using networked information visualization systems, with the goal of doubling the speed and quality of command decisions. The system was developed in a research setting by Global Infotek, Inc.; ISX Corporation (now part of Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories); Oculus Info, Inc. (now called Uncharted Software Inc.); SYS Technologies, Inc.; and MAYA Viz (now part of General Dynamics C4 Systems) with the active participation of military personnel as subject matter experts.

CPOF is one of several examples of collaborative software, but intended specifically for use in a mission command. A shared workspace is the main interface, in which every interface element in CPOF is a shared piece of data in a networked repository. Shared visual elements in CPOF include iconic representations of hard data, such as units, events, and tasks; visualization frameworks such as maps or schedule charts on which those icons appear; and brush-marks, ink-strokes, highlighting, notes and other annotation.

All visual elements in CPOF are interactive via drag-and-drop gestures. Users can drag data-elements and annotation from any visualization framework into any other (i.e., from a chart to a table), which reveal different data-attributes in context depending on the visualization used. Most data-elements can be grouped and nested via drag-and-drop to form associations that remain with the data in all of its views. Drag-and-drop composition on live visualizations is CPOF's primary mechanism for editing data values, such as locations on a map or tasks on a schedule (for example, moving an event-icon on a map changes the lat/lon values of that event in the shared repository; moving a task icon on a schedule changes its time-based values in the shared repository). The results of editing gestures are conveyed in real-time to all observers and users of a visualization; when one user moves an event on a map, for example, that event-icon moves on all maps and shared views, such that all users see its new location immediately. Data inputs from warfighters are conveyed to all collaborators as the "natural" result of a drop-gesture in-situ, requiring no explicit publishing mechanism.

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