M&S users and technologists met in Alexandria, VA, August 18-20 to discuss where M&S technology might be headed in the next decade and to identify potential shortfalls in its ability to meet the needs of the education and training, analysis, and acquisition communities. The workshop, "Simulation Technology 2007" (SIMTECH 2007, Session II), was sponsored by the Military Operation Research Society (MORS). The workshop's overarching goal was to promote a more effective dialogue between the users of M&S and the technical community, according to workshop organizer, Dr. Stuart Starr, of the MITRE Corporation.
Workshop attendees focused their attention on the future - specifically the year 2007. User communities assessed their M&S needs while technologists predicted the directions and ranges of relevant M&S technologies over the next 10 years. "The discussions were meant to stimulate an active dialogue that balanced requirements pull and technology push," commented Starr.
This workshop was one in a series of workshops that have been convened during the last decade. The first workshops took place in 1987 (known as SIMTECH '97), when a similar mix of participants gathered to make recommendations to the Services and Joint Staff for M&S investments in the following decade.
The SIMTECH 2007, Session I, was held in December of last year. It included a retrospective look at the SIMTECH '97 results. The retrospective revealed that SIMTECH '97 had been influential in shaping the M&S technology agenda of the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO). It also highlighted the need for SIMTECH 2007 to project a range of options to reflect the uncertainties in looking out a decade. There were two types of potential errors identified from the SIMTECH '97 projections. These included failureThese included failures to identify emerging trends, such as the explosive growth of the Internet and failure to reject selected false hypotheses, such as the assumption that massively parallel systems would become much more commonplace.
SIMTECH 2007, Session II, started with a keynote speech from General Larry Welch, USAF (Ret.), President of the Institute for Defense Analyses. Welch spoke about recent Defense Science Board (DSB) studies, including one that considered the use of "Simulation for Innovation." He reported that, for the most part, M&S hashave been used to tell us "what we know." In the future, M&S needs to be a tool to explore "what we don't know"; to explore new concepts, tactics, and doctrine; and a tool to generate new insights to problems.
In addition to General Welch, VADM Pat Tracey (USN), Vince Roske (Joint Staff), and Pat Sanders (OSD) provided insightful briefings on the revolutions that are projected in the areas of education and training, analysis, and acquisition, respectively. Vern Bettencourt (USA) concluded the plenary by assessing the M&S needed to enable these potential revolutions in all three application areas.
On the following day, Mr. Dell Lunceford, from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), provided an M&S technology overview. M&S technologies were subdivided into 4 categories: modeling methodology, development methodology, computational/communication capability, and data/information understanding. The briefing provided an assessment of the current state of simulation technology and conservative and aggressive predictions for the year 2007 in each of these areas.
The different functional groups then assessed how well the technology predictions satisfied their perceived technology needs. Technology areas where the projected needs exceeded the benchmark conservative and aggressive projections were flagged as technology areas for concern.
The exciting result, according to Starr, was that many of the identified M&S challenge areas cut across the three functional areas of analysis, acquisition, and education and training. The bulk of the major challenges fell in the areas of modeling methodologies (e.g., dealing with cognitive aspects and performance modulators, such as fear) and data/information understanding (e.g., acquiring and transforming the data required by M&S applications). These similarities provide hope that if investments are made in these areas, substantial progress might be made, benefiting all functional areas.
Another area that stimulated a great deal of dialogue was whether current trends will continue towards large scale, multi-purpose simulations, or instead, if simulation development will support what Lunceford called "boutique modeling", defined as "a way to create small scale, easy to build, use and throw away simulations". Participants seemed divided in how they perceived simulation might be heading in relationship to this issue.
For more information on this conference, visit the MORS web site.
Contact Julia Loughran
