NATO STO

The “Handbook (Best Practice) for Computer Assisted Exercises (CAX)” was developed by the MSG-106 Task Group from 2012 until 2015 and published by the NATO Standardization Office (NSO) as a NATO Standard (AMSP-05 Edition A Version 1) in August 2018, and is covered by STANREC 4801. Its intent is to provide operational level guidance for Distributed Synthetic Training (DST) and in particular CAXs with simulation support. The NATO Modelling and Simulation Group (NMSG) is the custodian of AMSP-05 and periodically reviews the document. The assessment of the latest NMSG review is that ASMP-05 has to be revised in order to provide a current technical and best practice reference. AMSP-05 was developed as part of a set of standards related to the NATO ACT program “NATO Education and Training Network” (NETN). The other standards were AMSP-03, a standards profile for CAX, and AMSP-04, a distributed simulation federation agreement. AMSP-03 and AMSP-04 have recently been updated to reflect the current NATO DST vision that supersedes NETN. AMSP-03 Ed B identifies AMSP-05 as one of the core COLLECTIVE TRAINING AND EXERCISE PROCESSES. The NMSG recommends revising AMSP-05, specifically to remove duplications with other documents (e.g., Bi-Sc 75-3, IEEE 1730) and to emphasize best practices and lessons learned. As much as possible, existing documents should be referenced by AMSP-05 (instead of duplicating content) and best practices in AMSP-05 should augment those documents. Also, AMSP-05 should align with other Distributed Synthetic Training documents (such as AMSP-03 and AMSP-04) and allow for future operational DST guidance beyond CAX (e.g., MTDS, UCATT).