The increasing demand for virtual training and war gaming has prompted the Defense Department to reorganize how it manages modeling and simulation.
Ongoing efforts to integrate disparate modeling and simulation work reflect growing pressures on the armed services to collaborate more closely in weapon systems procurement, research and development, officials said.
“We need to do things better and we need to make a collaborative effort across the community,” said Fred Hartman, deputy director of readiness and training policy and programs in the office of the deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness.
Speaking at the Defense Department’s inaugural modeling and simulation conference, that was supported by the National Training and Simulation Association, Hartman added, “We need to dedicate our energy and our dollars to create those infrastructures … those kinds of things that are absolutely necessary, to enable the live, virtual, constructive environment, to serve not only training, but to serve testing and experimentation and perhaps even adaptive planning.”
The Pentagon’s modeling and simulation office was directed seven years ago to show the benefits of “cross-service and cross-community” cooperation, said Hartman.
To attain “common and cross-cutting” tools, data and services, the office is transitioning to a modeling and simulation coordination office that will support six communities: training, analysis, acquisitions, testing, planning and experimentation.
By establishing those communities as the driving force, the entire defense modeling and simulation community will save money, promote interoperability and create efficiencies, said Hartman.
“The bottom line in all that is we’re looking at ways to share resources and a collective pot of money,” he said. “We’ll do more than either one of us could’ve done alone.”
But at the service level, the joint picture appears cloudy.
Representatives from each of the services shared their visions of the future in subsequent presentations. Though they each drew similar conclusions — of attaining more interoperability, jointness and net-centricity in modeling and simulation — they revealed myriad challenges impeding progress toward those goals.
Some services are dealing with cultural barriers, while others are involved with funding or downsizing issues. But the underlying challenge appears to be surmounting the disparity in current modeling and simulation capabilities, which span a wide gap.
At one end of the spectrum is the Marine Corps’ modeling and simulation office, which, as one speaker told the conference, consists of one half-time person.
“We have a part-time major, who has the majority of responsibilities elsewhere, but he helps us organize Marine Corps modeling and simulation,” said George Akst, senior analyst for the Marine Corps Combat Development Command.
The Corps is more decentralized in its approach to modeling and simulation than some of the other services, he acknowledged, but it probably will start building up to a much larger organization to be on par with the others, he said.
The Corps is using modeling and simulation at the analytical level for irregular warfare assessments and planning and at the tactical level to help in the battle against roadside bombs, said Maj. James McDonough, modeling and simulation analyst for the Training and Education Command.
Simulations have long been perceived by the Corps as only a supplement to live training, he said. But, “we’re getting to a point where we have to do constructive or virtual training to get those people not on active duty to go fight the fight,” he added.
In the middle of the spectrum are two services in the midst of transformation.
The Navy’s modeling and simulation office is in a state of flux, director John Moore told the conference.
“We’re moving to something new,” he said.
For the past two years, the office has been establishing a corporate or “enterprise” approach to modeling and simulation.
The sea service has had a “small stable,” for modeling and simulation during the past decade, but didn’t get much accomplished because of lacking funds and poor organization, said Moore.
The restructuring will allow the service’s communities to knock down “stove pipes,” to share resources and to work together for modeling and simulation success, he added.
Initial forays using this new structure have produced cost reductions, reported Capt. Michael Lilienthal, director for modeling and simulation in the office of the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development, test and evaluation.
The Army, too, is reorganizing how it handles modeling and simulation. It is transitioning from a program-centric model to an enterprise-centric model, to focus on jointness and reuse, said Col. George Stone III, director of the battle command and simulation directorate.
Stone contends that one of the problems under the current model is that a simulation system can languish in the development process, sometimes for 10 or more years. He also sees simulations stuck in program development, because they have to address temporary operational environment needs.
By the time such systems enter service, the environment and technologies have changed.
“It’s just not meeting what the war fighter needs,” he said.
Funding is adequate, however, said Stone. The current budget shows the service spending $1 billion on simulations. But that money is sometimes a big target for more pressing needs, such as hardware for soldiers. Hardware is going to win out over something like software for future research and development efforts, said Stone.
Moving to an enterprise approach will help alleviate those problems by making systems reusable in the long term, he said.
The Air Force, on the other hand, previously completed a reorganization of its modeling and simulation house, said Maj. Gen. Gregory Power, director for operations and support integration. But now it is feeling the pressure from the mandates to downsize in manpower and to recapitalize an aging fleet.
The service needs to retain modeling and simulation experts who have the appropriate training and education to develop the best possible simulations, software and technology to support the future force, he warned. Such technologies reduce risks as the service attempts to increase war fighting capability.
“Modeling and simulation is absolutely essential. There’s no way we could operate in our current environment, as well as others, to be able to do our job and get our mission done, if we didn’t have this capability,” he said.