Year: 2004

Author: Margaret Martinez

Abstract:

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself," wrote Leo Tolstoy. Have you ever thought about how learning changes your brain? If yes, this paper may help you explore the research that will change our learning landscape in the next few years! Recent developments in the neurosciences and education research are beginning to have a significant impact on our understanding about empowering individuals to learn more successfully.

Neuroscientists are exploring brain processes and the implications on human learning. They are urging educators to gain a better understanding of the brain plasticity research for improving educational practice. In this paper, readers will see for themselves how specific learning activities change the brain and provide a framework for enhancing the learning process. This framework should follow a 4-step learning process, including sensing, recognition, interpretation, and finally action or integration. Readers will both visualize and experience the learning process and explore their own disposition to learn, examine the theory that grounds this research, and consider strategies and pathways that lead to improved learning for diverse learning audiences.

Year: 2004

Authors: Ronald Smits, John Kearley

Abstract:

The Missions and Means Framework supports DoD's transformation from a Forces-based, materiel-centric (focused on the "players") Cold War posture to a Mission-based, capability-centric (focused on the "playbook") asymmetric warfare focus. The framework establishes a disciplined, repeatable procedure for explicitly specifying the mission and assessing mission accomplishment. The framework is an integrated procedure for deriving mission requirements in accordance with joint guidance, analyzing the task, capability, and solution trade-offs, and specifying the required capabilities and training needs. This paper will outline the concepts of the MMF and detail the methodology's successful employment in each of the following 4 areas:

a) The US Army's Future Combat Systems Acquisition Program (supporting the Program Office, the

Combined Test Organization, and the Training IPT) b) Operations Plan to Task Decomposition in support of DUSD(R) as requested by Joint Staff J-7. The Study

identified the war plan mission-specific JMETL for the responsible combatant command (USPACOM) down to supporting tasks at every subordinate echelon. The resulting list of decomposed tasks, conditions and standards was provided to the Joint Staff and DUSD(R). The office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness) will use the interim and final reports to guide their combatant command readiness reporting c) The Joint Readiness Mission for the Joint National Training Capability, specifying mission to task to

capability to materiel and non-materiel solutions to determine effective Joint Training Requirements d) The use of Missions and Means Framework The paper will further demonstrate how these results are consistent with the "Joint Defense Capabilities Study: Final Report" recently completed. This Study, led by the Honorable Pete Aldridge, concluded that among other findings, a common framework is essential to enable the organizational change requirements for DOTMLPF.

Year: 2004

Authors: Dr. Loretta DiDonato, CDR Joseph B. Famme USN (ret), LCDR Alan Nordholm Ph.D. USN, Senior Chief Alan Lemon

Abstract:

Requirements for new ships in an era of increasing threats, escalating personnel costs and fiscal constraints have escalated the priority of Human Systems Integration (HSI). The challenge is to create and use metrics for ship and human engineered systems that optimize human performance within ships that are designed with complex automated propulsion, auxiliary and weapon systems. Total Ship Systems Engineering (TSSE) includes techniques for manning analysis to characterize and validate the crew duty requirements in an associated sailor profile data base that describes the composite knowledge-task-time demand for each crew position across all mission profiles in the context of advanced automation technologies and survivable hull forms. A technology considered but not currently implemented in the manning analysis process is a Total Ship-Crew Model (TS-CM) that adds the attribute of dynamic time to the analysis of coupled ship systems-crew performance. This paper will address the use of a TS-CM analysis tool to validate ship systems processes and reduced crew manning while capturing the ship-crew model for future use in support of HSI objectives over the ship lifecycle.

Year: 2004

Author: Mr. Nephi Lewis

Abstract:

Synthetic environments clearly play a key role in simulation, training, mission planning, and increasingly, command and control operations, and represent a significant cost of these systems. They have traditionally been "pre-built" into render-able databases by converting what is largely vector and gridded data into polygonal and texture formats. Once built these databases are unfortunately, often difficult to modify and verify, not easily re-used on other platforms, and contain proprietary data and data formats, specific to one vendor's methods for rendering. Because of their monolithic nature, and the difficulty of modifying them, they are also less likely to be based on current source data, such as the latest SRTM terrain data.

By taking advantage of today's increasingly faster PC processors and building polygons on the fly, much of the work of pre-building data for rendering can be eliminated. Instead of paging polygons stored on disk, elevation grid posts and vector data, which contain the essential elements that describe the world in a much more compact form than polygons, are paged to a rendering engine that is not only capable of rendering polygons and texture, but creating them from the more basic vector form. Segregating the several types of data that make up a synthetic environment (such as terrain, feature data, atmospheres, imagery, and moving entities), until just before rendering, facilitates the dynamic creation of scene polygons. This markedly reduces the cost of synthetic environment production, maintenance, and verification. In simple terms, this shortens the path from NGA source data to real time polygons.

Year: 2004

Authors: David Rodriguez, Chad Tossell, Michael Garrity, Rebecca Morley

Abstract:

The AOC is a weapon unlike any other in the United States Air Force (USAF) inventory. Training hundreds of personnel across various duty specialties to function toward common Joint Force Air Component Commander (JFACC) objectives is a complex and arduous task. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Warfighter Training Research Division, along with Aptima Inc., and the Group for Organizational Effectiveness (gOE), have undertaken this challenge and have begun to define AOC training requirements. The method by which they have defined these requirements includes an in-depth and specific functional work analysis of each division to obtain the necessary knowledge and skills a person needs to be competent in his or her position within an AOC.

This paper focuses on three ways to apply this process to transform traditional AOC training. To date, AOC training events utilize large-scale scenarios built by experienced AOC personnel. These scenarios focus on training objectives at a general level across the AOC. Consequently, due to the numerous jobs within an AOC and the generality of the current scenarios, traditional AOC training has not been efficient. The outcomes of this research can be used to enhance scenarios used for AOC training and construct a training repertoire at a level more inclusive of the entire training audience, thus optimizing the training received during large-scale exercises and ensuring AOC operators receive the most comprehensive training possible. By linking a comprehensive list of specific knowledge and skills to actions elicited by scenarios, we aim to (1) identify possible training gaps missed by current scenarios, (2) refine current scenarios to better focus the training objectives for all participants, and (3) develop a more comprehensive list of scenarios to cover all knowledge and skills required to be an expert AOC operator working within the Combat Operations Division (COD) and related support functions.

Year: 2004

Authors: Marc D. Winterbottom, George A. Geri, Bill Morgan, Byron J. Pierce

Abstract:

Spatial and temporal resolution are two of the most fundamental characteristics of visual displays, and yet they are often incorrectly defined and specified. In order to address this problem, we have developed techniques for estimating both spatial and temporal resolution, and we have compared the resulting estimates to data obtained from perceptual tasks. The spatial resolution technique is based on a VESA standard (FPDM, Ver. 2.0), and was applied to several CRT displays. It was found that the pixel count does not adequately define display resolution when the former exceeds the bandwidth of the display device. In addition, the spatial resolution measurements were found to correlate well with perceptual assessments of the orientation of target aircraft simulated at various distances. The temporal resolution technique involved measuring the response of various displays to simple light patterns that could be flickered at up to 30 Hz. Data obtained for CRT projectors indicated that temporal artifacts obtained with these devices are due primarily to the limited frame rate of the image generator, rather than to limitations in the temporal response of the projectors. In addition, data obtained from liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) projectors indicated that their on- and off-responses are short enough to support 60 Hz simulator frame rates, but that the hold-time used to maximize image luminance interacts with eye movements to produce temporal artifacts that can reduce the quality of the displayed imagery. The results of a perceptual test, based on the perceived separation of moving lines, were consistent with the measured temporal resolution of the two displays.

All measurement and analysis techniques described here have been implemented in a software package that is available from AFRL, Mesa, Arizona.

Year: 2004

Authors: John Cipparone, Wayne Randolph

Abstract:

The importance of "military operations other than war" (MOOTW) continues to grow as DoD structures its forces to combat threats that challenge our democratic values. As in Afghanistan and Iraq, MOOTW often encompasses open-ended missions unrelated to traditional military core competencies. Geopolitical factors, transformations in U.S. security policies, terrorists' attacks, and the proliferation of technology, all serve to reinforce DoD's mandate for its warfighters to "fight and win" on the MOOTW battlefield.

To acknowledge such realities, and in response to operational needs for modeling non-force-on-force peace support and stability operations, the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO) continues to explore modeling and simulation (M&S) technologies relevant to MOOTW. In consonance with the initial vision that created a prototype MOOTW "toolbox" to advance planning, end-to-end analysis, decision support, rehearsal, and training, DMSO is refining its effort to enable the tools to be used in a complementary manner across the levels of war. Correspondingly, an extension of this program includes ongoing initiatives to extract C⁴ISR data from selective DoD C⁴I systems and to ingest discrete data into the toolbox to initialize/update vignettes for the models/applications to use.

This paper will describe the current status of DMSO's initiative to develop and field a "toolbox" that enables warriors to prosecute aspects of selective mission areas within MOOTW across shifting civil-military operations. Inclusive in this paper is an overview of the toolbox architecture that enables tools to exchange data in Extensible Markup Language, thereby providing leaders more time to think through symmetric and asymmetric interactions inherent in MOOTW. Moreover, lessons-learned from the toolbox's recent employment in Iraq by an analyst from the Center for Army Analysis will be discussed as it relates to ongoing and future opportunities in support of Service and joint operations.

Year: 2004

Authors: David R. Pratt, Amy E. Henninger

Abstract:

Load balancing attempts to optimize the utilization of processors in a parallel computing systems, and dynamic load balancing is a prime candidate for improving the performance of distributed battlefield simulation systems. Last year we reported on development of test-bed developed to assist in the empirical exploration of a number of dynamic load balancing heuristics. Unique to the test-bed was a modification of the classical discrete-event simulation (DES) scheduling paradigm that enabled us to determine processor load at the application level. Experimental runs considered a number of load-balancing heuristics, corroborated results reported by other researchers, and provided confidence that our approach is indeed feasible.

Absent from this initial study was a consideration of cost measures for the system and a recognition of the conflict between distributing workload evenly and minimizing communication costs. For a load balancing system to be effective, the cost of balancing load must be less than the cost of the status quo. The cost is manifested by the monitoring, selection, transport, and initialization time, versus the processing and bandwidth requirements. Without proper monitoring and calibration, it possible to spend more time trying to balance the load than it does actually processing productive work. In this paper we present the implementation of additional test-bed infrastructure designed to capture these tradeoffs. Moreover, we motivate the selection of heuristics to be considered, present the results of experimental runs with these heuristics, and discuss the implications of the results.

Year: 2004

Authors: Randolph M. Jones, Alan J. Wallace, Jens Wessling

Abstract: The Army has a rich store of highly immersive flight simulations/simulators. Due to the expense of deploying multiple flight simulators, they are often used in experimental scenarios that only represent a single aircraft at a time. However, this is unrealistic because modern tactical Army aviation rarely flies solo, rather flying at a minimum in pairs. To enable more realistic simulation while reducing costs, applications often use constructive simulation of entities. However, the standard implementations of constructive entities sacrifices simulation fidelity by using low-cost desktop simulations that do not provide the precision and accuracy necessary in modern simulated warfighting exercises. A desirable solution would decrease cost while also retaining realism by providing autonomous, tactically correct, high-fidelity behaviors for the constructive simulated entities. This is the goal being addressed by the Automated Wingman project. This project integrates a state-of-the-art simulation architecture with the most advanced current technology for building knowledge-intensive intelligent agents. In addition to the most immediate application, providing automated wingmen for Army experimentation with rotary-wing aircraft, this project provides a more general opportunity to broaden the use of Intelligent Synthetic Force (ISF) models in DoD applications. The industrial-strength integration of the Soar architecture for intelligence and the VR-Forces simulation environment creates a robust platform for future applications both in the DoD and the commercial arena. This integration relies upon a clean design that includes independent but interacting components. As a consequence, the resulting system contains individual parts that can be reused or upgraded as future demand and development dictate.

Year: 2004

Authors: Andreas Tolk, James A. Muguira

Abstract:

Currently, standardized distributed simulation systems are likely to follow the High Level Architecture (HLA) standard, not only because it is widely adopted in the United States for DoD applications, but also because it can be seen as the most matured M&S standard in this domain. However, the HLA focuses on the implementation level; thus it cannot solve problems on the conceptual level, such as validation, verification, or composability of models. The Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) deals successfully with the conceptual challenges, but its application is limited to the academic community. The M&S community is still looking for a general method insuring interop-erability on all levels, from the syntactic level via the semantic level to the pragmatic/dynamic level, and maybe even to the most general conceptual level. To this end, the communication-driven ideas of the HLA must be merged with the conceptually driven ideas of DEVS, preferably in a commercially viable way.

One candidate is the Model Driven Architecture (MDA), proposed by the Object Management Group (OMG). The MDA can best be described as an overarching standard framework merging various middleware solutions and platform independent models of various application domains, using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) as the common concept gluing the various components together.

This paper introduces the concepts of the MDA and shows, how the complementary ideas and methods of the HLA and DEVS can be merged into a well-defined M&S application domain within the MDA framework, allowing heterogeneous solutions as well as the migration from existing solutions to alternatives. The focus of this paper is the proposal of a framework of methods ensuring reusability, composability, and orchestration of events in a heterogeneous M&S and information technology environment, based on the migration of successful and accepted concepts.