Incorporating high-fidelity networked communications modeling in the evaluation of large-scale system-of-systems

Military force structures are becoming increasingly complex and net-centric as new technologies are developed and deployed. As such, there is an ever increasing need to provide system-of-systems (SoS) analysis tools to assist in evaluating a military combat team's survivability, lethality, sustainment and logistics. Evaluation of networked communications as part of this analysis is often overlooked due to the complexity and scope of the communications problem. A team lead by Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is developing net-centric SoS modeling and analysis capabilities by integrating high-fidelity networked communications modeling with a large-scale, SoS simulation and analysis tool. The combined modeling approach brings together the strengths of each tool to achieve complex, net-centric SoS analysis. This paper describes the combined modeling and simulation (M&S) capability and presents example analysis results from the completed phase-one effort. Experiments conducted show the effect of functional communications on a combat team's survivability at a SoS-level. The result is an approach that bridges the gap in high-fidelity communications modeling with logistics and survivability for large-scale SoS problems.