Modernization of Military Simulators through Modularity

10/7/2015

One of the main challenges nowadays in the simulation industry is about how to increase the value of each dollar/euro invested in a simulation system in every phase of its life cycle, from its acquisition to the end of its operational life. This is an increasing demand in every market using simulators but probably the strongest request is from the military market.

Military agencies worldwide, especially those with bigger investments in simulation & training solutions, as those in NATO countries, are very worried about the lack of productivity, efficiency and effectiveness in the acquisition and support of their portfolio of simulators. They are demanding solutions with a bigger return of investment (ROI) and a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) . They want simulators that are not only cheaper to buy but are also adaptable to changing requirements. Industry must respond not only to meet this demand with the new systems but also by providing solutions to evolve the portfolio of simulators already deployed to this new requirement in the market.

How can we do that? Other commercial sectors and even military sectors with the same demand, are responding by adopting common modular and open architectures, fully based on standards. This requirements are also on the simulation domain, but till recently, only for distributed simulation solutions, in which the problem is how to connect multiple devices in the same network. Many literature and discussions are available about the challenges and gaps for distributed simulation (for example see my former post in this blog: http://www.simware.es/blog/why-is-so-difficult-to-use-distributed-simulation ). But if we do a systematic analysis of the situation we can see that the adoption of open, modular and interoperable architectures in the military simulation market is not going only to solve many challenges in distributed simulation but is also going to help to increase the ROI and reduce the TCO of the simulator itself. A modular design, based on a common architecture with standarized interfaces will help to have adaptable simulators that can be easily upgraded when the demand is changing. Modularity will also enables the creation of ecosystems in the industry, fostering competition, avoiding vendor lock-in and allowing open innovation.

We have just released a new whitepaper analyzing in more detail how the adoption of modular designs will help the industry at a whole, helping to meet the demand of the users and buyers. click in the link to download it.

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Posted by Jose-Maria Lopez. General Manager in Simware Solutions

4 Comments

JOSE MARIA LOPEZ

10/19/2015 03:29:52 pm

Take a look to this interesting interview to Thales executives at AUSA about the strong requirement for modular designs and open architectures for the the military systems. Thales managers recognizes that they must now to propose open systems and that the era of propietary and non-standards systemsis over. Discussion is about land (vetronics), naval combat systems, unmanned and weapon systems, but discussion can be fully applied to the simulation & training systems.

Modular designs are put in value as a very important lever to speed up the development times and as a real cost-saver for the customers.

http://www.defensenews.com/videos/defense/show-daily/ausa/2015/10/15/73961786/

Maxime Bagnoud

11/8/2015 11:02:46 pm

Hi José, thanks for sharing this very interesting video.
I would like to rebound on the part concerning cybersecurity. The Thales executives interviewed correctly stipulate that we are moving from an era where we were protecting the system perimeter to an era where we are protecting the data.
Indeed, as we interconnect more and more systems together in System of systems (whether they are simulators or operational systems), protecting the perimeter becomes increasingly difficult, not to say practically impossible, especially if they require data coming from outside the secured defence network they might be sitting on.
In fact, with a data-centric architecture where the data is concentrated on a central bus (as is the case with DDS), the main security challenge lies in the protection of this centralized data repository while satisfying the real-time requirements of a dynamic mission-critical or simulation system. Mechanisms must be in place so that data cannot be accessed unduly, with the goal of ensuring:
- Integrity: data cannot be modified or created without authorization
- Confidentiality: data cannot be diverted without authorization or stolen.
- Traceability: Data modifications from CSCs or from users (or at least unexpected ones) are traceable, e.g. logged.
- Availability: All data is available within a defined quality of service (depending on its criticality and RT-characteristics).

I know that DDS offers embedded features to address some of these issues (e.g. QoS), but I would still be interested in understanding better the way you address them at Simware, resp. as part of LSA?

Best regards,
Maxime.

Jose-Ramon Martinez

11/16/2015 10:45:01 am

Hi Maxime

As you mention DDS has security in one of the standards (http://www.omg.org/spec/DDS-SECURITY/). We want to use this security "as is" in LSA. We are aware that this security cannot be enough to cover the level of security required for military standards (MLS) but, since there are no clear requisites for this MLS security, we think that, for the moment, is better to have something working that nothing at all.
This security is not related with QoS (it covers the communication and the resources) but is built over the data layer. Take into account that DDS is not about concentrating the data but just the opposite, fully distributing it over any network. This allows, for example, the creation of separate domains of security. Latest versions of DDS already include Autentification and cryptography.

Regards

JOSE MARIA LOPEZ

10/23/2015 08:44:53 am

Interesting interview at Federal News Radio. Here it is not only highlighted the importance of simulation to train the soldiers but also the increasing age of many of the training devices already deployed. New investments will be required to upgrade and replace old systems by new ones. Only way to do it in the actual conditions of budget restrictions is by adopting modular and open architectures.

Go to http://federalnewsradio.com/defense/2015/10/army-training-digital-natives-virtual-battlefield/?sf14334777=1 to listen the whole interview.

Modernization of Military Simulators through Modularity

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