OPFOR 21

Large exercises employ a number of Opposing Force (OPFOR) role players, each of which usually has a single job. However, in expanding the availability of training systems and events to remote units, the number of OPFOR players will be a bottleneck on scalability. There are many activities in which a single person manages a number of tasks/scenarios. For example, a chess master can play dozens of challengers simultaneously and stock traders handle hundreds of orders from other traders. Is it possible to a talented OPFOR player to handle two, three, or more scenarios simultaneously? If he had a well designed simulation interface that did not impede such multi-tasking, could he effectively fight multiple missions at the same time? This is just one step in improving the efficiency of human operations in a simulation center.

Interoperable Architectures vs. Simulations vs. Customers

Interoperability between diverse simulation systems has been a major focus since the 1990's. We have made huge strides since then. The limits that we experience in interoperability today are not due to poor designs of architectures or infrastructures. DIS, HLA, TENA, and others offer more opportunities for interoperability than we are able to exploit. Limitations in interoperability are generally due to the need to keep old (and expensive to replace) simulations in the inventory. There can be no magically engineered architecture that can pull together all of the extremely different data, model, and interface representations in dozens of existing simulations. To create a distributed simulation environment that is tightly linked (or highly interoperable) we have to create new architectures and new simulation systems that match each other. Tying old models to a new architecture or infrastructure will always be a suboptimal solution.