Integrating Architecture and Simulation Tools for Modeling and Evaluating Military and Commercial Processes

The current generation of modeling and simulation tools is inadequate for the long-term needs of the U.S. Department of Defense. Several commercially-developed tools are available to create simulations of warfighting events, but do not provide a capability of creating Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) products that describe the event. Likewise, tools that support the DoDAF do not provide all of the simulation capabilities need to evaluate live, constructive and virtual (LCV) warfighting events. Visual Simulation Objects (VSO) has been developed over the past five years primarily as an architecture tool. However, it has some features normally associated with simulation tools, including a High Level Architecture (HLA) interface. The proposed research and development investigation will build upon the Phase I results to add advanced simulation capabilities to VSO, including the integration of VSO with commercial, high-resolution 3-D graphics programs, an interface to generate simulations from warfighting architectures presented in the Unified Modeling Language (UML), analysis tools the help analysts verify and validate architectures and simulations. Changes will also be VSO to bring it into compliance with the requirements of the Core Architecture Data Model (CADM) and, as it develops, DoDAF II.