Toward Improved Logistics Models Used By Computer- Generated Actors

In the United States, Joint Vision 2020 (www.dtic.mil/jv2020) identifies “Focused Logistics” as a key component of achieving dominance across the full spectrum of warfare in future conflicts. As a result, logistics must increase in its presence in military simulation environments in order to accurately portray a real-world military environment with all of its required complexity. To date, however, most military simulation environments do not have an accurate and complete portrayal of logistics activity and its impact upon operational capability. In this paper we discuss a nascent technology that can be used to address this shortfall by inserting accurate, high fidelity representations of military logistics into distributed simulation systems. The second section of the paper contains a discussion of a logistics simulation software architecture and its capabilities for logistics modeling. Section Three contains a discussion of the Cougaar and Ultra*Log system and how we propose introducing them into a distributed simulation, the corresponding simulation system capabilities needed to exploit their capabilities, and how simulation systems can be integrated with them so that realistic logistics constraints can be introduced into military simulations. The paper concludes with our suggestions for future work to integrate logistics into military simulation environments.