Data and Decision Traceability for SDA TAP Lab's Prototype Battle Management System

TL;DR

This paper addresses the challenge of transparency and accountability in a complex, multi-party Battle Management System by establishing end-to-end data and decision traceability. It proposes applying MITRE/NIST IR 8536-inspired principles to BMS data flows via a centralized message bus, with a formal header schema that records inputs, outputs, and causal relationships. The work outlines how object discovery and decision inference can be traced from initial events to final recommendations, enabling auditing, error diagnosis, and continuous improvement. The authors plan to realize this framework through a graph database and a traceability UI, facilitating post-hoc analysis, replay, and broader system optimization in space-domain awareness operations.

Abstract

Space Protocol is applying the principles derived from MITRE and NIST's Supply Chain Traceability: Manufacturing Meta-Framework (NIST IR 8536) to a complex multi party system to achieve introspection, auditing, and replay of data and decisions that ultimately lead to a end decision. The core goal of decision traceability is to ensure transparency, accountability, and integrity within the WA system. This is accomplished by providing a clear, auditable path from the system's inputs all the way to the final decision. This traceability enables the system to track the various algorithms and data flows that have influenced a particular outcome.

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: The Prototype Battle Management System (BMS) grouped into its functional subsystems.
• Figure 2: Flow of goods (forward through time) and traceability (backwards through time): Use case of information verification within a manufacturing supply chain. (Figure from Pease2024)
• Figure 3: Traceability aims to capture Left: For each process (algorithm) in the system, the instantaneous inputs and outputs and Right: Establishing causal relationship between processes by tracking when one (child) consumes the output of another (parent). These two simple rules allow modeling complex systems with hundreds of algorithms and complicated data exchange patterns.
• Figure 4: Data required for traceability: Inputs (green) and outputs (red) of an algorithm are captured via the header schema along with metadata for a UCT processing algorithm (blue box).
• Figure 5: Traceability links a newly discovered object to the breakup event in which it originated.