pic related
www.dodccrp.org/events/9th_ICCRTS/CD/papers/163.pdf
1.1 Coalition Data Sharing There is a supposition in net-centric warfare that the effectiveness of a coalition will increase with the amount of shared data [1]. This supposition presumes that the shared data contributes positively to the situational awareness and effectiveness of the recipient platform. Logically, however, the marginal utility of additional data diminishes since the most valuable data would typically be chosen to be exchanged first. Further, there is a cost to processing the received data that typically increases with the decreasing information content of the additional received data. There is, therefore, little benefit to exchanging low-level data if the data does not contribute to an improvement in situational awareness or if the recipient platform lacks the capability to further process the data. There may be significant benefit, however, if the recipient platform is able to jointly process the received data with organic data to produce a more accurate or complete operational picture. The issue then becomes a trade-off between the cost of exchanging and processing the data and the relative improvement in the operational picture.