BML and MSDL for multi-level simulations

Military training needs to reflect the complexity of real-world operations. The main training audience is currently often focused at a certain level (e.g. joint headquarters staff, component headquarters staff, platoon leader, individual combatant), but it will typically include some interactions with levels above and below the own organizational level. Federations of multiple modeling level simulations are now mature enough to provide a realistic and coherent synthetic environment. The challenge is now to translate military orders build in Command and Control systems to stimulate the target simulations (high level ones such as aggregated unit models or low level ones such as platform models), and in the opposite direction, to send back reports from the simulations that are customized for the recipient C2 system. The NATO Modeling and Simulation Group MSG-085 studies interoperation of C2 systems and simulators by standardizing the orders (C-BML: Coalition Battle Management Language) and the simulation initialization (MSDL: Military Scenario Definition Language). During 2012 and 2013, France, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have worked together in the NATO MSG-106 (SPHINX: enhanced CAX architecture, design and methodology) to improve the process of multiple level Simulation-C2 initialization and information exchange. The different steps of this process are: the writing of military orders in C2 systems, the conversion of these orders into C-BML format, the conversion of these C-BML orders into High Level Architecture (HLA) objects and interactions for high level simulations and then the decomposition of these high level orders into low level ones suitable for lower level simulations. The focus of this work is in the HLA area where the MSG-106 experts defined a high level as well as a low level BML Federation Object Model (FOM) extension to the so-called 'NETN (NATO Education Training Network) reference FOM' that has been developed previously in MSG-068. Furthermore, this FOM extension has been tested with national simulations and support tools (C-BML/HLA gateway, HLA C2 agent⋯). This paper presents the basic design of the C-BML FOM modules, the extension of MSDL schema and the results of their experimentation.