Improving Tactical Data Link Simulation Standards To Better Support LVC Exercises

ABSTRACT: The SwAF Air Combat Simulation Centre (FLSC) has taken an initiative called the Air Combat FOM (AC-FOM), which extends the RPR-FOM v.2.0 standard reference Federation Object Model (FOM) to better support aerial combat simulation and further enhance the level of interoperability between various internal and external simulation components. As part of the work of extending the Real-time Platform Reference Federation Object Model (RPR-FOM), FLSC has also identified a need to improve the way current standards support simulations of Tactical Data Links (TDL).

The identified drawbacks with the current standards of simulating the Link16 TDL is that it requires a lot of ef ort to implement, is cost driving and is hard to use when connecting to simulation sites in other security domains. The current standards have not succeeded in attracting the Commercial of The Shelf (COTS) market in supporting it and today, as an example, very few COTS Computer Generated Forces (CGF) tools support TDL. Benefits of the current standards are however that they enable the connection with real/live systems and since Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) is 1 an important requirement for the future of FLSC this needs to be catered for in future versions of TDL simulation standards.


Another requirement, due to the need to of er a simulation capability and support training for other countries than Sweden, the TDL simulation standard should support the simulation of dif erent TDLs without the requirement of making large changes to the simulation system. A more generic and “clear text” implementation that complements the current standards requirement for a link specific binary data array. This paper discusses how current standards should be updated to better support the simulation requirements of FLSC and similar sites and improve interoperability with other simulation sites while maintaining interoperability with real Tactical Data Link networks.

Authors: Patrik Svensson, Stefan Sandberg, Jouni Lindqvist, Ragnar Hammarqvist
Publication: Proceedings of 2018 Winter Simulation Interoperability Workshop, 18W-SIW-040, Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization, January 2018

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