Composable Mission Spaces and M&S Repositories – Applicability of Open Standards

Andreas Tolk, Virginia Modeling Analysis & Simulation Center (VMASC), Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529

12/22/2008
(Original Publish Date: 4/5/2004)

The challenge of generating a federation driven by operational requirements "on the fly" has been formulated in various programs and proposals, but so far, no satisfying solution has been accomplished. The use of open source doesn't satisfy the industry, which has a vital interest to keep their core solutions in-house (protection of intellectual property). The use of interface-driven solutions based on black boxes leads to discrepancies and inconsistent federations. The use of open standards to connect components and escorting reference models - allowing a white box view on the components functionality and their interior and exterior interrelations without revealing the implementation details - will fulfill the industry requirement for privacy as well as the user requirement for the necessary transparency required for V&V and credibility of the federated solution. Using an improved version of the Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model (LCIM), various open standards will be evaluated concerning their contribution to respective levels. Based on this finding, a possible implementation will be proposed showing how the various open standards can complement each other resulting in an M&S repository comprising heterogeneous solutions that can be federated into a composable mission space driven by the users requirements. Furthermore it will be argued, that aligning these standards within DoD is possible, and this will help to terminate the shortcomings of interface driven solutions and to integrate components delivering M&S functionality into real world systems, in particular for Command and Control.