Engineering Principles of Combat Modeling and Distributed Simulation

Andreas Tolk

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780470874295
• eBook ISBN: 9781118180303
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mathematics
• Subtopic: Probability & Statistics
• Index: Mathematics

Explore the military and combat applications of modeling and simulation

Engineering Principles of Combat Modeling and Distributed Simulation is the first book of its kind to address the three perspectives that simulation engineers must master for successful military and defense related modeling: the operational view (what needs to be modeled); the conceptual view (how to do combat modeling); and the technical view (how to conduct distributed simulation). Through methods from the fields of operations research, computer science, and engineering, readers are guided through the history, current training practices, and modern methodology related to combat modeling and distributed simulation systems. Comprised of contributions from leading international researchers and practitioners, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the engineering principles and state-of-the-art methods needed to address the many facets of combat modeling and distributed simulation and features the following four sections:

• Foundations introduces relevant topics and recommended practices, providing the needed basis for understanding the challenges associated with combat modeling and distributed simulation.
• Combat Modeling focuses on the challenges in human, social, cultural, and behavioral modeling such as the core processes of "move, shoot, look, and communicate" within a synthetic environment and also equips readers with the knowledge to fully understand the related concepts and limitations.
• Distributed Simulation introduces the main challenges of advanced distributed simulation, outlines the basics of validation and verification, and exhibits how these systems can support the operational environment of the warfighter.
• Advanced Topics highlights new and developing special topic areas, including mathematical applications fo combat modeling; combat modeling with high-level architecture and base object models; and virtual and interactive digital worlds.

Featuring practical examples and applications relevant to industrial and government audiences, Engineering Principles of Combat Modeling and Distributed Simulation is an excellent resource for researchers and practitioners in the fields of operations research, military modeling, simulation, and computer science. Extensively classroom tested, the book is also ideal for courses on modeling and simulation; systems engineering; and combat modeling at the graduate level.

Chapter 1

Challenges of Combat Modeling and Distributed Simulation

Andreas Tolk

Simulation Engineers and Their Multiple-View Challenges

There are many good books written on the topics of combat modeling and distributed simulation and most of them are used as references in this book, so why write another book on this topic? The reason is simple: while all other books in this domain successfully highlight special topics in detail none of them compiles the basic knowledge of all contributing fields that a simulation engineer needs to be aware of, in particular when he or she starts a job. To my knowledge, none of the existing books give the required holistic overview of combat modeling and distributed simulation needed to get a primary understanding of the challenges.

An editorial remark: in this book I will address the simulation engineer in the male form—using he or his as pronouns—without implying that female engineers are less common or qualified; I just prefer to address the engineer simply as he instead of complex he/she combinations or the impersonal it.

There are good books that focus on various topics of combat modeling, but they do not look at what modeling decisions mean for the ensuing simulation task(s). Other books introduce the engineer to the specifics, such as specific Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standards for simulation interoperability, but they assume that no modeling needs to be done by the engineer doing the integration, although it will be shown in this book that understanding the underlying models is pivotal to making sure that the resulting simulation federations are valid. Other books on validation and verification do not address the combat modeling tasks or the distributed simulation task in detail, but all three topics have to go hand in hand. Finally, the operational analysis community developed many valuable insights that can be reused by a simulation engineer but the applicability of their results to support combat modeling and distributed simulation is not dealt with explicitly, as simulation is perceived as just one powerful tool within a set of alternative tools. For the simulation engineer, this knowledge will be educational when confronted with such broader views that need to be supported by work.

In addition to all these technical aspects, the simulation engineer has to understand the customer: the soldiers and decision makers in the military domain. The various terms and their semantics of language need to be understood. An understanding of how soldiers fight and conduct their operations is required in order to understand how to support their training and their real-world operations. Tactical, operational, and strategic principles must also be understood in order to model entities and their behavior and relations in the situated battlefield. These operations grow in complexity and are conducted on a global scale. The same is true for training and support of operations, and the simulation engineer is the person who needs to ensure that the right systems are interconnected providing the appropriate capabilities in an orchestrated fashion. An understanding of the problem is needed along with the conceptualizations of supporting models, the implementation details of the resulting simulation systems, and the applicable standards supporting the task of integrating the systems to support the soldiers. Applicable solutions need to be identified as well as selecting the best set for the task, composing them into a coherent solution, and orchestrating their execution. All aspects will be addressed in the upcoming chapters and the state of the art and current research will be presented in the invited chapters written by internationally recognized experts of their special domains. In other words: the simulation engineer has to understand the operational foundations of the supported domain, the conceptual foundations required for the modeling, and the technical foundations of implementing and composing simulation systems.

The chapters of this book are oriented at education needs identified while teaching various courses on ‘Engineering Principles of Combat Modeling and Distributed Simulation’ and related topics in graduate programs and professional tutorials. They address the needs of graduate and postgraduate students in the engineering and computer science fields as well as scholars and practitioners in the field. To address the variety of challenges and recommended solutions, the book is divided in four parts: Foundations addresses the operational aspects, Combat Modeling addresses the conceptual aspects, Distributed Simulation addresses the technical aspects, and Advanced Topics.

• The Foundations section provides a consistent and comprehensive overview of relevant topics and recommended practices for graduate students and practitioners. It provides an initial understanding necessary to cope with challenges in the domain of combat modeling and distributed simulation.
• The Combat Modeling section focuses on the challenges of modeling the core processes of move, shoot, look, and communicate in the synthetic environment. The simulation engineer will learn the basics about modeling a synthetic battle sphere that is the conceptual basis for simulations. Modeling is the process of abstracting, theorizing, and capturing the resulting concepts and relations in a conceptual model on the abstraction level. This section educates the simulation engineer and provides the ability for understanding these concepts and their limitations.
• The Distributed Simulation section introduces the main challenges of advanced distributed simulation. Simulation is the process of specifying, implementing, and executing the models. Simulation resides on the implementation level. In particular when simulation systems are developed independently from each other, the simulation engineer has to know which of these systems can be composed and what standards are applicable. The basics of validation and verification will also be explained as well as how such systems can support the operational environment of the warfighter.
• The Advanced Topics section highlights new and current developments and special topic areas. Recognized experts in their domains contributed these chapters. These topics address the needs of advanced students and scholars. They can be used in advanced teaching and in-depth study of special topics, or as a source for scholarly work. I invited recognized experts of these various domains to provide their insight in these chapters.

It should be pointed out that the chapters in Part IV of this book are written by invited Subject Matter Experts of the advanced topics. The views expressed in these chapters reflect the views of the authors alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any of their organizations. In particular they do not reflect the views of the US Government or its organizations. The views are based on education and experience of the individual experts. Neither the selection of advanced topics nor the selection within the chapters is meant to be complete or exclusive, but will give examples that can be extended.

When reading the invited expert chapters the reader will notice that there is some overlap between the chapters within Part IV as well as with the first three parts of the book. For examples, Chapters 18 and 25 look into attrition modeling that is introduced in Chapter 9, and Chapters 16 and 19 look at simulation interoperability standards that are introduced in Chapter 12. This redundancy results from the idea that the chapters in Part IV of the book were written to be assigned as independent introductions into the advanced topics and as such can stand as publications by themselves. Furthermore, the viewpoint of all contributions is slightly different, which will contribute to the diversity of the presentations and therefore to the diversity of the education of the simulation engineer. It not only reflects on the multitude of domains in this body of knowledge—the comprehensive and concise representation of concepts, terms, and activities needed that make up the professional combat modeling and distributed simulation domain representing the common understanding of relevant professionals and professional associations—it also reflects the diversity of opinions within the core domain and the contribution domains.

No other compendium addresses this broad variety of topics which are all important to a simulation engineer who has to support combat modeling and distributed simulation. It is hoped that this book will replace the collection of copies of selected book chapters and proceedings papers that I had to use in the last decade to teach. However, I am sure that I will never be able to get rid of additional material for the lectures, as the research on these related topics is rapidly evolving. Nonetheless, the core knowledge captured in this book should remain stable for some time to come.

In my lectures I observed that students sometimes gets lost after the first couple of sessions as so many different aspects are important that on first look do not seem to be related. What do methods of semantic web technology have to do with validation and verification? Why is the resolution of the terrain model important to kill probabilities of military systems? For new students in the domain, even the vocabulary used becomes a challenge, as many military terms are used that need to be understood.

The following sections will provide a sort of overview of the book: where to find information, why chapters are written, what is the common thread through the books, etc.

Selected Challenges the Simulation Engineer Will Encounter—Where to Find What in this Book

What should the reader expect to find in the following chapters? The first three parts of the book are structured following the challenges a simulation engineer will face in the process of conducting work. They address the foundations (the basics necessary to conduct the job correctly), combat modeling (the processes of abstracting and theorizing), and distributed simulation (focusing on building federations and supporting the soldier and decision maker). The fourth part addresses topics that give a historic perspective of where we are and where we came from as a community, in-depth presentations of theory, methods, and solutions, and more.

Finally, two annexes provide starting points for simulation engineers that are looking for more information. The first annex enumerates professional organizations and societies—structured using the categories of government, industry, and academia. For each entry, a short description is given and a website address is provided where more information and contact addresses can be obtained. The second annex gives some examples of currently used simulation systems. Both lists are neither complete nor exclusive but are meant as starting points for more research.

As the author and editor of this book I obviously hope that all chapters will be helpful to the readers. For scholars, educators, and students, the following overview can serve as an introduction to the topics. For readers who use this book more as a handbook or compendium, the overview will help them find the appropriate chapters to read in detail.

Foundations

What contributes to the foundations of combat modeling and distributed simulation for simulation engineers? What needs to be addressed? Should the focus be on how to conceptualize and theorize and build a good combat model? Or should the emphasis be on software engineering and distributed systems that are necessary and essential to support the kind of worldwide simulation federations that contribute to the success stories of military simulation applications?

The approach chosen in this book is different. It focuses, in the foundations part, on methods and solutions that allow a better understanding of the challenges that the military user faces, as the problem(s) to be solved is pivotal. Without understanding the customer, neither models nor simulation can provide insight or solutions. Furthermore, the need to understand the general limits of the approach in comparison with alternatives is needed: applying combat modeling and distributed simulation for the sake of applying it because it is technically possible cannot be a driving factor to recommend or to choose a solution. Generally, recommending one particular solution although other good alternatives are available is unethical. These ideas established the foundations for this book: ethics, best practices for operational assessment, and the problem domain of military users. Figure 1.1 shows the foundations and the four contributing domains.

Figure 1.1 Foundations.

The Foundation part starts with Chapter 2, dealing with applicable codes of ethics developed and adopted by professional organizations. These codes provide the central guidelines for professional conduct as proposed by the IEEE, the Military Operations Research Society (MORS), and the Society for Modeling and Simulation (SCS). All applicable codes of ethics focus on the necessity to be honest about the research and its limitations. However, ethical conflicts can arise in myriad situations, in particular when engineering goals and business interests are in conflict. Furthermore, own research interests can lead to breaching professional ethics. Simulation engineers in the domain of combat modeling and distributed simulation must clearly understand that the research and solutions are applied to train soldiers and support decisions in the defense domain and therefore directly contribute to what can be a matter of life and death, not limited to the soldiers. If, for example, a flawed design occurs in the national missile defense system, hundreds or thousands of civilians can suffer the consequences of a missile attack. Bad training leads to bad decisions which lead to less protection of those that are dependent on soldiers. Combat modeling and distributed simulation is a serious business and requires highest ethical principles to be applied.

The simulation engineer must make every attempt to ensure that the best combat models and distributed simulation solutions are applied. In order to do this, the simulation engineer needs to understand the big picture of the customer; best practices are needed to guide choices. The NATO Code of Best Practice (COBP) was written as a guideline for professional operational analysts on what to consider when setting up and conducting studies in general. It addresses simulation, but shows the application within an orchestrated set of tools of which simulation is just one of many. As such, the COBP addresses two important aspects. First, it shows the applicability constraints and limitations of simulations in comparison with other alternatives. Second, the best practices collected by a group of international experts in the domain of operational analysis are generally applicable, and as such applicable to studies supported by combat modeling and distributed simulation as well. How does one capture the sponsor's problem and come up with a solution strategy? How does one set up scenarios to capture applicable measures of merit of relevant human and organizational issues? How does one select the best methods and tools and obtain the necessary data? How does one reduce risks? Good practices and guidelines are provided and should be known and applied by all simulation engineers.

Chapter 3 introduces the simulation engineer to the “languages,” or jargon, required to communicate in this field: those of the simulationist, the military simulationist, and the military customer. In Terms and Application Domains, the simulation engineer is introduced to the principles of modeling and simulation first. There are different modeling paradigms that can be used to model entities, behaviors, and relations in the battlefield. There are different domains that can be supported: the training of individual soldiers, groups of soldiers, or command posts; the evaluation of alternative courses of action in real operations; detection capability gaps in doctrine for possible future operations; procurement of new military equipment; and more. Simulationists have already developed special terms to address these concepts, but the military simulation community developed additional or alternative terms to address their areas of concern. On top of these, military language is full of terms with very special meaning the simulation engineer must know to efficiently communicate with subject matter experts. Among these are military hierarchy, the basics of weapon systems, and more in order to model required entities correctly. After studying the terms and concepts introduced in Chapter 4, the simulation engineer will be able to study papers on special topics without too many difficulties regarding the language used.

The last chapter of the first section, Chapter 5, builds a bridge between the foundational understanding and how to model the concepts. The chapter Scenario Elements gives an overview of the military entities, their behavior, and their relations within the situated environment. It puts the terms and concepts introduced in Chapter 4 into the context of combat modeling. The principle of alignment and harmonization—that is applied subsequently in the following chapters—is introduced and motivated. This principle requires the alignment and harmonization of what we model (represented concepts), the internal rules driving the behavior (decision logic), and the applied measure of merits defining the success (evaluation logic). It can be understood as follows: (1) if something is modeled, it should be used in the model; (2) if something is used, it needs to be measured and evaluated regarding how successfully the use ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedicated Page
• Preface
• Contributors
• Biographies
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Challenges of Combat Modeling and Distributed Simulation
• Part 1: Foundations
• Part 2: Combat Modeling
• Part 3: Distributed Simulation
• Part 4: Advanced Topics
• Annex 1: M&S Organizations/Associations
• Annex 2: Military Simulation Systems
• Index