Stimulation of Live C4ISR Experimentation Environments by Using HPC Simulation

Abstract

As the Army’s operational paradigm shifts toward Network-Centric Warfare (NCW), the use of high performance computing (HPC) assets to aid experimentation in Live, Virtual, and Constructive (L/V/C) environments has become increasingly valuable. Army networks are evolving from hundreds to thousands, to tens-of-thousands of communicating entities, which use an increasing variety of applications, host computers, routers, switches, and radio systems. Live test and evaluation of large, complex, C4ISR System of Systems (SoS) is quickly becoming impractical due to cost and component availability. Additionally, as the Army evolves its experimentation abilities, systems must not only be tested as individual systems, but must also be tested as a part of the larger Warfighter SoS capability. The use of an HPC-enabled L/V/C environment to aid in stimulating, scaling, and analyzing these C4ISR SoS technologies is a solution that PM C4ISR On-The-Move (OTM) leveraged heavily during experiments conducted at Fort Dix, NJ, during 2008.