The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Lockheed Martin $3.5 million to develop a new tool that will allow commanders to better understand and evaluate options as they plan military operations.

Called the Commanders Planning Reifier to Explore Hypothetical Action/Effects in N-Domains, or COMPREHEND, the new tool will enable commanders to develop Effect-Based Operations (EBO) plans that are rooted in a more thorough understanding of achieving desired effects and anticipating unintended consequences. Such a capability is important because - as warfighters transition from target- to effects-based assessments - the complexity of planning increases and the cumulative, relational effects that ripple through an event become more important.

"Commanders will be able to propose desired effects of actions from diplomatic, informational, military and economic sources," said Janet Wedgwood, COMPREHEND technical lead, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories. "They will then be able to generate a model to explore the possible political, military, economic, social, infrastructure, and information (PMESII) effects caused by those actions."

Commanders will use COMPREHEND to develop and analyze campaign-level EBO and to help them understand how unanticipated second- and third-order effects may change the effectiveness of a planned action. The new capability will give them sophisticated analysis tools that are relevant to an operation without requiring coding or modeling expertise. A customizable visualization environment will let them choose what and how to display the information.

COMPREHEND will be an important enabling technology. It can be transitioned into defense and homeland security applications that use PMESII effects to understand the ramifications of military and non-military actions against non-traditional threats.

COMPREHEND is part of DARPA's Integrated Battle Command program. The agency's award to Lockheed Martin is for an initial nine-month phase of a 31- month program.

Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories is the system integrator and leads a team that includes Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems & Solutions, Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training & Support, Argonne National Laboratory, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, On Target Technologies, Science Applications International Corporation, Soar Technology, SoftPro Technologies and University of Pennsylvania.

Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, Lockheed Martin employs about 135,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in research, design, development, manufacture, and integrations of advanced technology systems, products, and services.

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SOURCE: Lockheed Martin