STO-Activities: (no title)
Activity title:
Evolving M&S applications and services for compliance with NATO standards for federated simulation
Activity Reference:
MSG-223
Panel:
MSG
Security Classification:
PUBLIC RELEASE
Status:
Active
Activity type:
RTG
Start date:
2024-03-20T00:00:00Z
Actual End date:
2027-03-20T00:00:00Z
Keywords:
AI, AMSP 04, Certification, Compliance, Federates, Federation Agreement, FOM, HLA, IVCT, MSaaS, NATO FOM, Test, Verification
Background:
NATO recommends and mandates standards for simulation interoperability used to integrate M&S Applications and Services into federated distributed simulation environments.
• STANAG-4603 covers the IEEE-1516 High Level Architecture standard that defines domain agnostic services for distributed simulation synchronization and data exchange.
• STANREC-4800 covers the AMSP-04 NATO Federation Object Model (NATO FOM).
The NATO FOM defines domain specific elements (“the language”) used to share data among M&S Applications and Services that are connected using HLA. It also defines patterns of simulation interplay and other agreements required for M&S Applications and Services to interpret data and to interoperate together according to the standard. MSG-068, MSG-106, MSG-134, MSG-163 and MSG-191 have developed and maintained the AMSP-04 standard since early 2008 and AMSP-04 Ed C is expected to be released by NSO in 2024. AMSP-04 Ed C will be based on the latest version of IEEE 1516 (HLA 4) and include a major update and release of the NATO FOM v4.0. However, existing M&S Applications and Services are not using the full potential provided by HLA or the NATO FOM. Limitations in compliance or use of different generations (versions) of the FOM causes systems to interoperate suboptimal when mixed in a federated distributed simulation.
To ameliorate the situation MSG-134, MSG-163 and MSG-191 have developed an initial HLA Certification process, a certification framework, the Integration Verification Certification Tool (IVCT), and some Executable Test Cases to verify compliance with HLA and AMSP-04. Other projects such as NATO NexGen M&S and Distributed Synthetic Training (DST) and MSG working groups also mandate the use of these standards and provide some support for evolving systems to comply with these specifications.
This technical activity proposal (TAP) is a great opportunity for the M&S community to get practical experience with using the NATO standards for federated simulation. Joining this activity will allow providers of M&S applications and services to work with the team that maintain and develop AMSP-04 and related tools to support test and verification. The focus of this task group is to support the adoption of the NATO M&S standards by providing the participants opportunities to evolve and integrate M&S Applications and Services.
Objectives:
The overall objective of this Technical Activity Proposal (TAP) is to support the evolution of M&S Applications and Services to the latest versions of STANAG 4603 HLA and AMSP-04 NATO FOM. Sub-objectives include:
a. Increasing the awareness and the adoption of NATO standards for federated simulation, and associated tools.
b. Setup of testing environments for conducting continuous test and integration activities.
c. Evaluate the use of AI-based compliance testing as an extension to the IVCT-Framework.
d. Maintenance and update of NATO FOM modules.
e. Maturing the NATO HLA Certification Service*.
*NOTE: All activities related to HLA certification requires the participation of the NMSG accredited HLA Certification Entity. Without this participation the items in the TAP related to HLA Certification and marked with an asterix (*) will not be covered.
Topics:
The following topics/tasks will be covered by this activity, ordered by objective:
a. Increasing the awareness and the adoption of NATO standards for federated simulation, and associated tools:
[1] Develop/Update presentation material and NMSG website content.
[2] Provide demonstrations of capabilities at ITEC/IITSEC/CA2X2 Forum.
[3] Provide learning material for using the AMSP-04 and IVCT software and for developing test cases.
b. Setup testing environment for conducting continuous test and integration activities:
[1] Create roadmap for testing compliance with NATO standards for federated simulation.
[2] Approx. 1-3 test periods per year focusing on various aspects of AMSP-04 standard, e.g., initialization/restore, entity tasking, aggregation/disaggregation. TBD.
[3] Set-up a persistent test environment including reference implementations of M&S Applications and Services, scenarios test tools.
[4] Support to testing related to exercises, e.g., CWIX M&S Focus area, bilateral exercises.
c. Evaluate the use of AI-based compliance testing as an extension to the IVCT-Framework:
[1] Adapt IVCT to support the concept of “Trusted Federations”.
[2] Research automation of test case generation including the use of AI techniques.
[3] Evaluate the scientific state of the art for applying machine-learning to communication protocol analysis.
[4] Investigate hybrid AI approaches to support the training of interoperability requirements.
[5] Implement a proof-of-concept implementation of an AI-based federate to be trained by within validated reference federations, and to be used within testing federations to detect compliance deviations.
[6] Assessment of the archivable compliance testing capability.
d. Maturing NATO-FOM modules, and developing interoperability requirements and capability badges:
[1] Maintain the NATO FOM based on NATO and National feedback.
[2] Develop interoperability requirements and capability badges for existing and new NATO FOM modules.
[3] Maintain and Update the Badge definitions.
[4] Improve NATO FOM documentation.
e. Maturing NATO HLA Certification Service*:
[1] Update CONOPS to version 3 based on feedback from ATIs and customers.*
[2] Evaluate NATO HLA Certification Service and Tools by experimentation.*
Contact:
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Title:
Created at 30/10/2023 12:00 by System Account
Last modified at 16/05/2024 22:00 by System Account
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