The Architecture and Design of a Cyberware Opposing Forces Knowledge Base

Currently, the US military is in the midst of a change in its philosophy, approach, and technologies used for warfare. The move toward small formations, small but extremely accurate weapons, and high speed movement all augmented by rapid, automated transmission of information between and among all military components brings about this change. This new form of warfare, in which a great premium is placed upon timely, accurate information, is called network centric warfare (NCW). For this future vision of warfare to be achieved and be effective, there are a number of issues that must be addressed and solved in the real-world and in the world of simulation. In the NCW battlespace of the future, the coming capabilities in networks and computing portend a time when warfighters will become very dependent upon the unprecedented level of detailed information available concerning the situation within a battlespace. This reliance will induce foes to attempt to disrupt the information flows in an attempt to gain an advantage or to disrupt friendly operations. The interplay between friendly efforts to maintain their information operations and enemy attempts to disrupt them will inevitably result in conflict in the cyberworld, or cyberbattlespace. In this paper, we will examine one of the issues that the impact of this switch in warfare paradigms will have on the world of simulation and focus on computer-generated actors (CGAs) that can be used to accurately portray opposing cyber forces. Because these cyber forces will be complex, many issues must be addressed as part of their development, including software architecture, knowledge base design and population, testing, and performance fidelity.