News From USJFCOM: USJFCOM collaborates with NATO Modelling and Simulation Centre of Excellence


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USJFCOM collaborates with NATO Modelling and Simulation Centre of Excellence

U.S. Joint Forces Command supports NATO M&S COE and nations in their transformation efforts by providing subject matter experts with modeling and simulation activities.

By MC2 (SW/AW) Amanda Dunford and Jessica Harbin
USJFCOM Public Affairs

(NORFOLK, Va. - May 22, 2011) -- U.S. Joint Forces Command's (USJFCOM) Joint Training Directorate/Joint Warfighting Center (J7) will partner with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Modelling and Simulation (M&S) Centre of Excellence (COE), by providing subject matter experts on all aspects of M&S activities to improve training and interoperability, amend capabilities, assist with doctrine standardization and support concept development through experimentation.

"The NATO M&S Group (NMSG) national membership actually drives many of the NATO technical M&S activities that we support and sponsor today," said Navy Capt. John Moore, USJFCOM J7 Joint Training Solutions Development division chief. "It's important to understand how members of this group plan to utilize this COE."

Representatives from J7 traveled to Rome earlier this year to participate in a planning meeting for the newly-established NATO M&S COE. The meeting brought together representatives from USJFCOM, NATO, Switzerland, academia and industry.

"Within the NATO M&S community, there is significantly more work to do than there are available resources," said Wayne Buck, an M&S analyst from NATO's Allied Command Transformation (ACT). "ACT is keen to have the NATO M&S COE in Rome as a fully participating and contributing partner in the M&S community."

A topic of discussion at the meeting was development of a technical test bed in central Europe. The test bed would be persistent, allowing NATO and the nations to use the facility for distributed testing and experimentation of a multinational NATO Education and Training Network that enables the linkage of live, virtual and constructive systems and command and control systems of NATO and other nations.

"The M&S COE is a place we can leverage to do technical testing in a European country," said Amy Grom, USJFCOM M&S Development deputy. "Therefore, we won't require people to travel to the U.S. for testing. We're taking a lead role in a follow-on experiment and would like to conduct the face-to-face development testing in the M&S COE. Since this facility is not involved in NATO training exercises, we won't be hampered by a joint event life cycle that ties up personnel and equipment."

USJFCOM is participating in follow-on meetings to finalize technical requirements that will be used by the sponsors to design and build the M&S lab and test bed. The next meeting will be May 22-26 in Helsinki, Finland. A road map of potential use of the COE by the NMSG is also in development. A progress report will be provided in September to attendees of the M&S COE workshop in Rome.