Reengineer Joint Simulation
SERVICES DROP SEARCH FOR COMPREHENSIVE TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS IN FAVOR OF LIGHTWEIGHT, FLEXIBLE TOOLS TO IRON OUT JOINT COMBAT ISSUES
After setting aside an ambitious plan to develop a comprehensive technological foundation spanning all the services, the Department of Defense is developing new, scaled-down approaches to providing combat simulations for joint training.
Each service has a separate responsibility under Title X to train its own forces, and each has successfully developed and acquired simulation capabilities that are focused on that responsibility. On the other hand, the drive to expand joint operations is giving rise to more joint training and to the requirement for deploying joint forces training simulation tools.
While each service has done well meeting its own individual training and simulation requirements, the quest to fulfill joint simulation requirements has stumbled along the way.
The Joint Simulation System (JSIMS) was to have been the answer to the services joint simulation requirements. But DoD, after spending 10 years and $1 billion developing the federated joint forces training simulation program, killed it in 2004.
Although the formal program no longer exists, pieces of JSIMS live on in other forms. The residue of JSIMS, residing particularly with the Army, may eventually spawn a future comprehensive approach to joint simulation.
The failure of JSIMS also has inspired DoD to take new approaches to joint training. A study completed last year recommended scaled-down expectations for joint training simulation and a new acquisitions business model.
JSIMS was killed because it was unmanageable and technically unfeasible. “But it wasn’t necessarily a bad concept,” said Army Colonel Michael Armstrong, chief of the Joint Technical Integration Group at Joint Forces Command (JFCOM). “The problems stemmed from the lack of a good management structure.”
The point of joint training and simulation, according to Armstrong, is to train for joint tasks. “The services do well providing service training requirements but not joint requirements,” he commented. “The Army would focus on ensuring what was needed to replicate ground forces for the Army component of a joint task force, but that may not work for the air tasks as part of a joint task force.”
C4ISR INTERFACE
The ambitious JSIMS was designed to federate service-developed computerized combat simulations to provide training across all phases of military operations and missions. It was to interface with C4ISR systems to create a shared environment capable of replicating the behaviors and interactions of forces. The system was based on a high-level architecture that included common standards and protocols.
The program’s technical difficulties were emblematic of those found in other massive transformational programs like the Army’s Future Combat Systems. These programs often require the merging of diverse technologies, and sometimes, for a variety of reasons, the technology doesn’t deliver.
Both its management and its technical difficulties sprang from the enormity of JSIMS’s mission and the complexity of its configuration. “Even though individual modules were tested and integrated singularly, they ran into difficulty when it came to putting it all together,” explained Fred Hartman, associate director for training and simulation in the Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Readiness.
For example, the Air Force module compromised the operation of the Army module by sucking up too much of the data common to both systems. “Maybe we should have known that the modules would behave that way, but we didn’t,” said Hartman. “We couldn’t understand why we would flip a switch and the lights would dim.”
Fixing that problem required a reengineering of the object model and the code that held the federation together.
Organizationally, the individual services were responsible for contributing content and functionality associated with their individual areas and to bear the costs of those activities. Separate funding was set aside for joint content and for securing common data.
“It was very difficult for a program manager who controlled only the central common funding to exert control over the funding and scheduling of service partners,” said Hartman. “The services’ programs were quite large and were controlled by their own acquisitions and management processes right up to the three-star level. If there were differences of opinion you could go up to the very senior levels, but even if that helped, it was still difficult to find the money to fund the functionality for the joint program. The restrictions on JSIMS hampered the possibility of managing the program in a businesslike way.”
What the program needed, Hartman suggested, was a program executive officer on the acquisitions side who would have the capability of performing portfolio analyses and the authority to redirect funds in response to emerging technologies and the evolving nature of needs and requirements and capabilities. “What we needed, but were lacking,” he said, “was a single authority who could play King Solomon and make some decisions.”
NEW TOOLS
The demise of JSIMS has led to the advent of the Joint National Training Capability (JNTC), a program managed by JFCOM. JNTC endeavors to develop lightweight and flexible tools by identifying opportunities for the services to iron out joint combat issues, according to Armstrong.
The approach taken with JNTC is a direct outgrowth of lessons learned from JSIMS, according to Hartman. The lightweight functionality means that simulations are designed to accommodate specific training and simulation tasks. The development of a single federated object model to accommodate all simulation functionality, which turned into one of the major technical glitches encountered with JSIMS, has been left for the future.
“We used to think of joint training as two or more services participating in an exercise,” said Armstrong. “Now we identify the rub points between the services, where two or more services are training on the same tasks, and work on those. The context is that the various components are all working together to work on joint missions.”
For example, the Army and Marine Corps jointly train on a tool that simulates the control of ground forces. Similarly, special operations forces train jointly with Navy and Air Force contingents on simulators that emulate the joint deployment of those forces.
The change in strategy that led to the abandonment of JSIMS and the development of JNTC also freed JFCOM to think innovatively about current conflict training needs and to abandon a strictly battlefield training model in favor of simulations that rehearse what forces actually encounter in places like Iraq. The traditional, “kinetic” simulation model, Armstrong explained, produces a common operating picture and replicates interaction among forces.
Newer training tools currently under development simulate, for example, scenarios that result from encounters with armed factions in an urban setting, simulating decisions about whether certain forces are, or are not, friendly and trustworthy. The game builds on these choices and can produce multitudes of variable encounters and endings. Armstrong expects that such a training tool will be fielded this coming summer.
Also coming are changes to DoD’s acquisitions methods. A recent report from RAND Corp. noted that JSIMS’s biggest problem stemmed from the vertical integration of contractors that provided both training tools and training services. Under a new proposed business model, DoD would no longer buy simulation tools, but only training services, and would rely on training service providers to buy or license the tools they require to deliver the training. A prototype for activating this new business model is currently in the works.
This new business model “focuses in on the ability to find solutions that already exist in the commercial sector,” said Armstrong. “We are currently working on a study on where we might best find these types of solutions.”
Meanwhile, some JSIMS components live on in other forms. JFCOM has recycled some old JSIMS components into JNTC, and the Army, which was the biggest contributor to JSIMS in the first place, has adapted its JSIMS contributions into WARSIM, a corps-level battle simulation, and ONE SAF (One Semi-Automated Force), a lower-end tactical warfighting model. Those Army programs have enjoyed full research and development and initial procurement funding.
WARSIM uses software computer-based simulation and associated hardware to support planning, decision-making, and operational execution from the battalion through the theater levels. Components of WARSIM include modules to support oper ational environment simulation, exercises and scenario generation, and after-action review. The system makes use of terrestrial and satellite communications for transmitting voice, data, facsimile and video among remote locations involved in an exercise.
The first iteration of the OneSAF Objective System (OOS) software was released by the Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI) last fall. OOS is an outgrowth of the experience with JSIMS, as it is a system that creates interoperability among simulations.
The vision for the software is to evolve it into a common training component in all Future Combat Systems training platforms, according to Lieutenant Colonel Rob Rasch, product manager for OneSAF. OOS may also evolve into a future JSIMS; the Army expects OOS to become a simulation model for the other services.
The OOS was initially designed to reduce duplication of the Army’s modeling and simulation investments, create simulation interoperability, and meet future force requirements, according to James Blake, program executive officer for PEO STRI.
But its capabilities extend well past the original concept. “Not only will OOS be the central element of the Army’s embedded training efforts, it will also aid our sister services in their modeling and simulation activities,” said Blake. “It will also advance Army and DoD training transformation initiatives, and improve value, quality and responsiveness of the warfighter.”
ARMY OPTARSS
The Army’s current training simulation needs are being fulfilled in part by a program called Services for Operations, Planning, Training, and Resource Support Services for Warfighter Operations (OPTARSS). That program, born in 2002, has nearly exhausted the $650 million spending limit imposed at that time. Consequently, Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) is planning to issue a request for proposals next summer for an OPTARSS II, a vehicle which could include a spending ceiling as high as $2 billion, according to Christopher Suhre, an OPTARSS program analyst at FORSCOM.
“OPTARSS was designed as a contract umbrella to provide an enterprise solution for training,” said Suhre. “The requirements were defined in advance and the eight prime contractors compete on task orders. This significantly cuts down on the solicitation time.” FORSCOM is also planning on awarding eight OPTARSS II prime contracts.
Modeling and simulation are among the tools employed by OPTARSS task orders, according to John Armstrong, senior vice president for business development at the Eagle Group, which received around 20 task orders under OPTARSS totaling around $10 million.
“It is a great vehicle because contractors are able to turn around proposals quickly and they make announcements quickly,” Armstrong said. “That is unheard of in other vehicles we work with.”
Some of the larger OPTARSSS task orders have involved training at battle simulation centers involving large headcounts, according to Lee Falkenstrom, a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, also an OPTARSS prime contractor.
Booz Allen’s work under OPTARSS has centered around studying the future needs of warfighters and the challenges surrounding Army modularization. “We have done a lot of work on the effectiveness of management processes in large structures,” said Falkenstrom. Booz Allen has worked on an OPTARSS task order for the General Officer Force Integration Task Force, a FORSCOM unit, providing that body with analysis and decision tools.
Perhaps the primary lesson to be learned from the Army’s experience by those continuing to labor on joint simulation efforts is that “bigger was not necessarily better when it comes to training simulation,” Hartman said. “Also, not all issues are appropriate for large-scale training.”
Joint simulation efforts are now focused less on the grand visions and theoretical scenarios associated with JSIMS and more on the specific and current needs of warfighters, Armstrong said. “We are now focused on key capabilities: How do we better replicate the operations of forces deploying into theaters?” ♦
