feature article

June 2006

Maritime Security Creates New Market for User-friendly Simulation Software

By Grace Jean

HUNT VALLEY, Md. — Agencies in charge of port security, such as the Coast Guard, are target customers for a new video-gaming technology that allows individuals to create simulations and rehearse complex missions on desktop computers.

A developer of military simulations, BreakAway Ltd., recently introduced a software package that could allow government customers to custom design their own games to meet their specific training needs.

The software — known as modeling and simulation builder for everyone, or MOSBE — can be described as the “Microsoft Office for simulations,” says Doug Whatley, chief executive officer of BreakAway Ltd. Users can create scenarios, play out war games and study ideas and new technology concepts.

MOSBE could help maritime security officials express the complexity of homeland security challenges by allowing them to design ports in a virtual world, populate them with ships and run numerous scenarios and exercises, says Whatley.

“Having this as a tool, where they can show people just how hard it is to do what they have to do, and be able to point out visually, in a real-looking virtual world, the things they deal with everyday will really help them sell their message,” he says.

The spectrum of war gaming and exercises has traversed a path from pencil-and-paper to high-end computer simulations. “But in the middle, there’s the gap there,” says Whatley. The company is seeking to reduce the need for turning to those simulations that require substantial investments in money, manpower and technology.

“They’re forced to spend millions of dollars to answer every question. Not every question requires that much horsepower,” says Whatley.

Scenarios for those high-end models cost approximately $10 million to develop over 18 months, says BreakAway’s Lindsay Riehl, director of marketing. With MOSBE, the same scenario could be developed in approximately two months, at a cost of about $500,000. The price includes MOSBE licenses and scenario development, she says.

Providing time-saving tools that also are accessible on desktop computers can help cut costs for budget-conscious users.

“We’re not as poor as we used to be, but we’re used to being poor,” Vice Adm. Terry Cross, vice commandant of the Coast Guard, told National Defense. “We have a resulting culture and a mindset that we are literally always looking for ways to do a job more efficiently, more effectively.”

The bigger war gaming simulations are physics-based models. MOSBE on the other hand, is effects-based, says Whatley.

“There are problems that you need those physics-based models to study. But the majority of the questions that the Coast Guard, the military and homeland security deal with every day really don’t depend on what the air velocity of a projectile is,” says Whatley. If an agency using MOSBE finds it requires more fidelity or more horsepower for a problem, it can turn to the traditional simulations, which will allow for more efficient use of those big models, he added.

MOSBE grew out of eight years of building tools for military war gaming support, says Whatley. The company converted those tools into an open platform that people could take and modify for their own applications.

“In the games business, if you get your fan base modifying your game and creating their own mods and generating content for it, then that’s a big success,” says Whatley.

It took a little more time for the concept to catch on outside of the gaming community. “We were kind of a fish swimming upstream,” he says.

Turning over control of a product to customers is a scary concept, says Whatley, but the success of empowering users often yields products that game developers would not have thought of.

“We think the same thing will happen if you empower the Coast Guard, the military, border security entities,” he says. “They’re going to start creating better things, better tools, on this platform than we could ever do for them.”

Initially, MOSBE was directed at ground warfare, modeling intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems and sensor packages.

“It was a lucky convergence for us, that right at the time we were turning to the naval side of things, there was this interest coming up in maritime domain awareness, so we were able to tailor our product that way,” says Whatley.

The program can also help the services better navigate the political and cultural implications of protecting the nation’s maritime borders, says Whatley.

“Within MOSBE, we want to be able to show not just that there’s a building here and a building there, but actually tell you, ‘this is an apartment complex, most people that live there are of this ethnic type or this religious belief,’ so there can be more preparedness,” he says.

Joint Forces Command and other military organizations have used the platform in war games.

The company is working on MOSBE version 2.0 that will have a more open architecture. “Our real dream is that it moves out of that war gaming shop and onto everyone’s desks,” says Whatley.

MOSBE comes with 250 different ground, air and naval vehicles and 180 different sensor models. But customers also can import their own technologies into the scenarios.

“If someone dreams up a new type of vehicle that they think would be better able to patrol the harbor, they can create that, put it into MOSBE and use that as a platform to demonstrate how that would work,” says Whatley.

MOSBE can be linked to PowerPoint slides, video, audio and even live feeds, such as information from sensors and a weather service. Players can employ existing scenarios or build their own simulations and write artificial intelligence scripting. Up to 16 players can be linked in the current version.

“Anyone who has played computer games is going to be able to sit down and just get going right away,” says Whatley.

At BreakAway’s headquarters here, Whatley pulls up a MOSBE simulation depicting a 300-by-300 kilometer area of North Korea. He switches back and forth between two views of the urban environment, which contains buildings, a harbor, and vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The two-dimensional view is reminiscent of what blue-force tracking systems display, complete with icons depicting friendly and non-friendly forces, while the three-dimensional view has the high-fidelity graphics of an action video game.

Clicking on a ground vehicle with the mouse calls up radio communications and players can give orders by selecting possible actions from a drop-down menu.

Smaller environments, such as a 30-by-30 kilometer reproduction of Baghdad, also were created. Just as in real life, people and vehicles move in and out of the player’s visual range depending on how many “eyes” he has on various targets.

“We can model just about any sensor type, including the output, in very great detail,” says Whatley, as an unmanned aerial vehicle flies into view. He clicks on it and is able to retask it to another flight path over the “Green Zone” for surveillance. He quickly toggles through the drone’s sensor feeds, from the electro-optical camera view to black and white thermal images.

The platform enables users to produce what is termed a “lite-simulation”— any simulation that doesn’t require technical expertise to design or play.

“It’s a disruptive technology. It’s going to change the way the military works, and the way homeland security works,” says Whatley. “That’s going to change what we, as software developers, do. We are going to have to be on our toes and address their needs, or we won’t be around. But we’re confident we can keep up with that.”

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