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There currently exists the need for fusion systems that can provide an accurate and comprehensive assessment of military situations in real-time. The objective of this effort was to define, prototype, and demonstrate an affordable next-generation JDL Level 2 fusion and exploitation architecture. The scope of this effort included the identification of the limiting criteria in current Level 2 fusion assessment systems that inhibit them from providing real-time assessment. Using this criterion and assessment of the hardware requirements trade space, solutions were proposed consisting of both hardware and software approaches including an assessment of cost impact. The validity of the solutions were then validated by applying them to an existing state-of-the-art Level 2 fusion system, the Nodal Exploitation Application Toolkit developed by Sterling Software; Rome, NY. The effort succeeded in providing a demonstration of the prototype on a Linux Cluster at the Air Force Research Laboratorys' Rome Research Site, in Rome, NY. Performance improvements were not limited to parallelizing existing algorithms across multiple processors. The sequential algorithmic processing was optimized as well. Compared to the original software running on a Linux PC, results show 30 times speed improvement on a single processor, 63 times speed improvement when run in parallel across 4 processors.