Distributed Simulation Systems Engineering: How to Play War

March 2001

A history of distributed simulation systems engineering at MITRE: • Joint Training Confederation (JTC): STRICOM managed confederation of service military simulations that exchange information via the ALSP to provide a joint simulated environment for use in joint training exercises. Used to support service, joint and combined training continuously since 1992 in Korea, Germany, Japan, and at various simulation centers in the United States. Currently in process of migrating to the HLA. Effort began: 1991 • Synthetic Theater of War: DARPA sponsored effort to link simulations depicting military vehicles and small units covering land, sea, and air domains. Federation used to support training and, later, experimentation. Effort began: 1995 • Pegasus: DMSO and United States Joint Forces Command sponsored HLA federation of faster-than-real time, analytic simulations used to addresses "what if" scenarios for Joint Vision 2010 (i.e. future forces). Effort began: 1998 • EnviroFed: DMSO sponsored HLA federation of simulations to represent the natural environment. Incorporated such factors as dynamic weather (snow, mud, etc.) Effort began: 1998 • Tasmanian Devil Project: A collaborative research project with DMSO, Air Force Research Laboratory, and the USN Manned Flight Simulator Laboratory at Patuxent River. Designed to examine the application of HLA toward mission level pilot training in manned cockpit simulators. Effort began: 1999

In the heat of battle, military commanders must make split-second life and death decisions. A moment of hesitation, a small miscommunication can mean disaster for thousands and cost billions of dollars.

With advanced modeling and simulation programs, those military commanders can practice war and prepare for possible conflicts. And, at the same time, they can help keep American men and women out of harm's way.

Simulations for the warfighter are designed for land, sea and air battles-some small, some massive. They encompass enormous amounts of data necessary for warfighting preparedness, including intelligence, logistics and communications. And, they can depict the movement of a single tank or plane-or an entire command, control, communications and information (C4I) strategy. The MITRE Corporation has worked in partnership with service and joint agencies for many years to help the warfighter develop the simulation tools and technologies needed to plan for success in war.

"Through sophisticated programs, the warfighter can control weapon platforms, and visualize command and control formations from a computer," explains Dr. Reza Eftekari, technical director. "Just about anything that happens in real war can be simulated on a computer."

"Modeling and simulation training exercises let commanders do what they know how to do—develop and execute viable strategies for the battlefield," adds Dave Seidel, principal simulation modeling engineer. "But with more practice and experience, they learn how to allocate their resources and coordinate staff elements better. They get to know their subordinates, peers and commanders, and truly work in concert with each other. Best of all, in a simulation, mistakes can be made and nobody gets hurt."

More than 10 years ago, MITRE began supporting the Aggregate Level Simulation Protocol (ALSP), first for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and later for the Army's Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM) in Orlando, Florida. This was the start of MITRE's long relationship with STRICOM, in which the company supports the command's mission to develop real-world state-of-the-art simulations for the warfighting environment.

The ALSP was developed to help the services bring their simulations together so that warfighters could train in a truly joint environment. MITRE developed the software needed to integrate the service simulation systems-then provided engineering management, logistics support, and testing. "We needed to make the technology and the terminology compatible so the simulations for the individual services could communicate together effectively," says Seidel. "At MITRE, we've served as the technical guide in developing new functional interfaces for use between models." The ALSP has been used extensively in the Joint Training Confederation (JTC), a confederation of military simulations used in joint training exercises. Today, MITRE continues to develop and maintain the simulation infrastructure for the JTC and to coordinate its annual testing and integration for U.S. training centers in Germany, Korea, Japan and the United States. The company also provides the training necessary to run the confederation during exercises.

In the mid 1990s, MITRE took on the challenge of designing and developing the High-Level Architecture (HLA) for the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO). The HLA, a single interoperability standard for simulations, has become the de facto blueprint for building joint theater and mission-level simulations. "For this endeavor, the company wrote 60,000 to 70,000 lines of code," says Howard Carpenter, associate technical director. "We created this architecture from the ground up."

One of the key benefits of the HLA is its ability to easily allow existing simulations to be used in new joint training exercises. "With the HLA there is no extensive retrofitting or rewriting of code to make simulations work together," notes Anita Zabek, senior principal simulation modeling engineer. "This allows simulation development costs to go towards enhanced functionality that will directly benefit the end user, instead of towards creating custom interoperability infrastructure."

In late 1999, the Joint Simulation System (JSIMS) Program Office decided to revamp the roughly 1.5 billion dollar JSIMS using the HLA. Technically, "the HLA serves JSIMS by letting us join the components together without being concerned about the internal details," explains MITRE's Dr. Richard Weatherly, JSIMS chief engineer. "JSIMS will help the 21st century warfighter prepare for real-world conflicts," adds Anita. It is slated to replace all other joint simulation programs currently in use-and will provide garrison and deployed forces an exercise capability to meet current and future training requirements.

JSIMS' mission is an impressive one. It will provide the core infrastructure and life cycle applications to support the design, planning, preparation, execution, and post execution assessment of training exercises and other related activities. The system will advance scenario design, development, and execution by providing tools that systematically link scenario objectives, events, performance measures, and feedback. "Joint task force commanders will be able to consider every facet of battle and know JSIMS can help them visualize any "what if" decision or strategy-and then review the results. In the past, joint simulations came from the sharing of information; with JSMIS the joint information is built right into the system," says Zabek. Version one will be released for validation by users in March 2002. The first planned joint use is in February 2003.

MITRE is coordinating key aspects of the system's life cycle development, including requirements management, technical architecture development, modeling agreements (e.g. ensuring planes and tanks have compatible data to support simulation execution), and integration and testing. The activities are supported by MITRE and government staff, and contractors.

"MITRE has a well-known expertise in distributed simulation system engineering and developing automated tools to support the software development and data management process," notes Zabek. "The scope of JSIMS alone makes the program an enormous technical/systems engineering challenge. In addition, we're doing things that have never been done before in the simulation domain—such as using Oracle client server technology instead of custom software for workstation distribution. To reduce risk, we're working in terms of "inch pebbles" instead of milestones. We want to ensure that each part of the development process-from the architecture to the integration-is on target and meets the individual and unique needs of all the services."

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