An overview of the design and implementation of a large and complex simulation effort: the Naval Research Laboratory's Tactical Oceanography Simulation Laboratory

As one would anticipate, there is considerable interest within the military community for developing the capability to accurately simulate the behavior of sound in any of the oceans of the world under any of the conditions which might arise there [1,2,3]. With this capability the quality of training could be increased and the associated training costs could be reduced; performance requirements for new systems could be examined under a variety of conditions which include working with all combinations of proposed, prototype, and operational systems functioning in both familiar as well as untested environments; tactics for deploying defenses, searching for an enemy and counter measures against that enemy could be evaluated; the impact of technological advances or the advantages gained through espionage by an enemy force could be evaluated, real and realistic situations could be recreated and thoroughly studied, and finally, the value of better environmental data could be determined prior to allocating both the time and money needed to collect, process, store and distribute that data [4].