Application Of Desktop Human In The Loop Simulation To Study Air Operations

While supporting the 2006 North West Shelf capability trial, Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) staff observed a Northrop Grumman virtual trial in which a surveillance scenario involving a simulated RQ-4B Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was conducted. From this trial DSTO identified a requirement to utilise human-in-the-loop (HITL) simulation to support acquisition and inform the development of tactics and concept of operations (CONOPS) for Project AIR 7000.Development of an indigenous HITL simulation capability received endorsement through consultation with the AIR 7000 S&T Strategy Group and became the Synthetic Human-in-the-loop AIR 7000 Research Program (SHARP). The SHARP is now developed and managed by the Aerospace Capability Analysis (ACA) branch within the Joint and Operations Analysis Division (JOAD) of DSTO. The ACA has partnered with industry and used an agile development process to develop a mature, reconfigurable HITL simulation capability based on a distributed architecture and a standardised integration framework. The SHARP has become one of the analytical tools within an operations analysis process, which DSTO employs to assist the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to:develop tactics and CONOPS;model maritime intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and response (MISRR) roles;perform capability assessment;conduct problem exploration;investigate human factors issues;model operator inputs for constructive simulation; andvalidate constructive simulation outputs.The CONOPS and tactics development life cycle (CTDL), is one of the main processes by which the ACA branch conducts operations research. It is an iterative process that integrates HITL and constructive simulation. The HITL simulation is used in the phase of problem development, where human operators are exposed to the military problem context within a simulation environment. The HITL simulation functions as a forum for military operators and researchers to resolve the problem into specific tactical options and their variants. The set of tactics and respective variants become inputs for the constructive simulation phase which performs robust analysis using Monte Carlo techniques. The output from the constructive simulation is passed through HITL simulation to test the veracity. This paper reports on the application of the CTDL within the ACA branch and provides examples where the SHARP has served as the HITL simulation capability. The paper also provides a summary of the design features within the SHARP that are used to achieve an agile desktop HITL simulation capability.