02E-SIW-052 Results and Lessons Learned from a Multi-National HLA Federation Development Supporting Simulation Based Acquisition

The NATO/PfP Interoperability and Re-use Study, NIREUS, is a thirteen-nation project to apply the High Level Architecture (HLA) to investigate multinational distributed simulation for system design and acquisition. The NIREUS test case concerns distributed simulation of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) air vehicles landing on ships, initially focusing on Maritime Unmanned Air Vehicles (MUAVs). Maritime landing of an air vehicle depends on the capabilities of multiple systems and the ability to orchestrate them together in a complex environment. For small ships in heavy seas, this operation can be particularly dangerous. Use of a common simulation framework enables nations to examine operational envelopes cost-effectively and without risk of life. The intention is to address system design and interoperability issues before buying and building hardware, and once hardware is built, to optimize performance of the system-of-systems. Thus, ship and aircraft designs can be improved, and safe landing envelopes can be expanded, meeting the ultimate goal of improving military effectiveness and safety. In Fall 2001, the NIREUS federation was successfully demonstrated at the integration site in Toulon, France. This paper describes the results of NIREUS federation execution, and discusses lessons learned from this multi-nation federation development. Of specific interest are the different aspects of interoperability and re-use encountered during NIREUS development.