General Dynamics to expand and enhance collaborative tool to help commanders share thoughts graphically

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., 7 Oct. 2011. Military battle management and situational awareness systems designers at General Dynamics C4 Systems in Scottsdale, Ariz., will continue work to develop an advanced decision-support system under terms of a potential $78 million U.S. Army contract. The agreement calls for General Dynamics to move ahead on developing the Command Post of the Future (CPOF), which provides military commanders and decision makers with situational awareness and collaborative tools to analyze information, share thoughts, and evaluate courses of action from different locations.General Dynamics won its original contract to develop the Command Post of the Future in 2007. The latest contract calls for company engineers expand the system's collaboration capabilities by enabling users to see and share information from several different control systems, such as ground, aviation, logistics, fires and airspace control systems.Under the contract, General Dynamics also will field the next-generation command and control architecture that can increase the number of users sharing the same information from hundreds to thousands, company officials say. Expanded capabilities will enable users who are purposely or inadvertently disconnected from the network to continue collaborating with their colleagues without interruption to operations or loss of data.

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General Dynamics C4 Systems is developing the Command Post of the Future in partnership with the Army's program manager for battle command. the company's CPOF tool suite is built with the General Dynamics CoMotion technology that supports visualization, information analysis, and collaboration, in an integrated environment.

Team members share workspace and collaborate to create a multi-perspective shared operational picture with synchronous and asynchronous cross functional planning and execution. CPOF was developed from a need to create a software environment that will support distributed and collaborative operations and enables commanders to control their forces from anywhere on the battlefield, General Dynamics officials say.

Collaboration involves sharing thoughts all along the military chain of command by enabling others to share their thoughts visually and graphically by using 2D and 3D information visualization, drag-and-drop information analysis, and sharing an understanding among subordinates and team members in different locations.

For more information contact General Dynamics C4 Systems online at www.gdc4s.com.