JFORCES OVERVIEW

JFORCES is a comprehensive simulation support environment encompassing space, air, land, naval and submarine assets.  Initially developed as a real-time, man-in-the-loop air defense command and control structure, FORCES has evolved into JFORCES - a comprehensive interactive and batch joint force simulation support environment capable of supporting engineering through campaign analyses.  FORCES is built around a simulation executive; a message-passing gateway orchestrating distributed processing and human control centers on a LAN.

Additionally. JFORCES is a theater-level, joint operations, systems engineering and C4ISR simulation environment supporting a wide range of military scenarios.  The first release of FORCES was developed as the Air Defense Initiative Simulation for Command & Control Development, to support Rome Labs in developing and evaluating alternative C3I concepts for air defense of the North American continent.  Enhancements have been developed and delivered to the government that include the addition of unconventional intelligence sources, development of physics-level sensors representation in Theater Missile Defense scenarios involving SCUDs, mobile launchers and cruise missile threats, representation of various ISR platforms AWACs and JSTARS, F-15s, SAMs, and other mission entities.  It has been used to provide digital interfaces with live space, air, ground, and naval platforms and subsystems and fielded workstations in two-way data exchanges. It has performed executions at the platform level for Operation Desert Storm, J-8 Southwest Asia and Northeast Asia Major Theaters of War (MTW), Joint operations Concepts (JOpsC) including MCO 1-N and other theater-level joint force scenarios and vignetts.

FORCES is a government-owned simulation environment representing a broad range of defense functions and requirements such as training and readiness, acquisition support, doctrine development, requirements definition and contingency planning.  FORCES is constructed around a message-passing executive supporting inter-process communication and network management interfaces for real-time, distributed, parallel processing.  The FORCES environment provides a robust set of analyst-oriented or operator-oriented interfaces for pre-simulation configuration, scenario generation, runtime controls and post-process analysis.

The FORCES implementation is consistent and standard complint with the DOD High-level Architecture(HLA) and is capable of interfacing with virtual nodes using the DOD's Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) Protocol. FORCES ability to emulate real systems' internal and external message structures in format, content and rate of presentation, offers an off-the-shelf, low-overhead capability to integrate, constructive models, manned simulators and live systems in real-time executions without filters, interpreters or major data transformations.

FORCES advanced scenario generation supports:

FORCES enables the user to perform all functions in a fully rule-based execution mode, with operator override, and with the ability to return to fully automated control, without interruption, at any time during the scenario.  Rules of Operation and Rules of Engagement used in the FORCES environment can be interactively constructed within the FORCES pre-simulation mode. A new graphical work-plan generation interface is currently being developed and implemented in the Presimulation mode that, with the JFORCES code Autogeneration capability, will allow the user to define stimulus-response pairing relationships between simulated functions resident in the JFORCES application libraries and associated response behaviors (alternative courses of action that may be sequenced and prioritized by the user from programmed actions/behaviors also resident in the JFORCES libraries). This graphical interface will provide rapid scenario generation covering a wide range of alternative behaviors wuth a minimal level of effort required to reuse or reprogram simulation software. Rules may be constructed for air, ground,space and naval operations for all assets in the FORCES framework. Rules may be constructed for automated strategic or tactical control anddirection of aggregated friendly, OPFOR and neutral force elements at all echelons of command, or at the individual platform, system or component level.Knowledge Engines may be incorporated that allow adaptive behaviors to be invoked for friendly and OPFOR command elements that allow alternative courses of action to be elected in accordance with beliefs held by simulation players that are based on interpretation of situation awareness displays generated by the simulation. The incorporation of these knowledge bases enables inferential processes to be used to "learn" and recommend best courses of action, based on past simulated behavior and assessment of the postulated leverage and benefits of prior decisions on current situations. This capability has been demonstrated successfully in JFORCES gaming support of the ARPA AUCTIONEER program where wings and squadrons of unmanned aircraft provided in-flight bids for ownership of sensor,communications relay, and weapons delivery missions against pop-up targets. Bids considered current operational situation and commitments and relative priority of targets as they were identified and developed overall resource allocation startegies intended to achieve optimization of mission outcomes as lessons were "learned" during overall mission prosecution.