INSTITUTION NAME: Syracuse University

WORKPAGE TITLE: WebHLA

PROJECT TITLE: CHSSI Training Materials

POC: David Bernholdt, bernholdt@npac.syr.edu, (315) 443-3857, fax
(315) 443-1973

CTA or PEI: Forces Modeling and Simulation (FMS)

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: 

In this project we interact with the FMS CHSSI projects FMS-2, FMS-3,
FMS-4, FMS-5 and we are developing training materials for the
individual FMS core modules as they are becoming available. In Year 3,
we were building training materials for the SPEEDES simulation
framework under development by Metron, Inc. We found this task to be
much more challenging than expected due to lack of up-to-date
documentation and the rapid growth of the SPEEDES software volume, now
support by three FMS CHSSI projects and two other major DoD programs:
Wargame2000 at the Joint National Test Facility at Colorado Springs,
CO, and the JSIMS Enterprise. Due to the growing interest in SPEEDES
in the DoD community and the lack of easily accessible documentation,
our SPEEDES training task appears to be both challenging and of
growing relevance for DoD and we were encouraged to continue it, both
by the FMS CTA Lead Bob Wasilausky and by the HPCMO FMS and PET Lead,
John Grosh. We therefore propose to continue this effort in Year 4,
using support from this project and also leveraging it with our other
planned/proposed projects related to SPEEDES such as: a) our planned
participation in FMS 5 that develops SPEEDES based RTI and uses our
Object Web RTI for testing and guidance purposes; and b) our
participation in new FMS CHSSI FY99 proposal with SPAWAR on extending
SPEEDES based Parallel IMPORT simulation language by a cognitive
support in terms of an Intelligent Agents layer. Another obstacle in
building entry level SPEEDES training is that the official SPEEDES
distribution contain only a few demos, whereas most ongoing SPEEDES
based application development efforts includes classified
materials. In an associated Year 4 proposal, we intend to actually use
SPEEDES ourselves as a simulation kernel in Parallel CMS. This will
allow us to develop a set of training demo materials that we can
control and demonstrate during tutorials or training sessions.


PROJECT OBJECTIVES: 

Develop SPEEDES training materials to be used by several major DoD
simulation programs such as NSS, Wargame2000 and JSIMS.

DELIVERABLES: 

User level know-how and source level understanding mof SPEEDES, Web
based entry level tutorials, Web linked SQL databases with the
navigation support for all available materials, design of the
interactive course modules, hands-on experience with SPEEDES based
Parallel CMS simulation.

CUSTOMERS/END USERS: 

SPEEDES users include Wargame2000, NSS and JSIMS developer
communities.

BENEFIT TO THE WARFIGHTER: 

Advanced HPC based FMS modules such as SPEEDES will play significant
role in shaping the next generation large scale simulation systems for
analysis, training and acquisition. Training on how to efficiently use
these modules to exploit their advanced capabilities is essential for
successful HPC technology insertion into the large scale joint
simulations of relevance for the warfighter.

PROJECT DEPENDENCIES AND SCOPE: 

This project is related to and includes results from and lessons
learned in the “SPEEDES + HLA Based Scalable Parallel CMS
Federate” project.

RISK ELEMENT: 

Complexity of SPEEDES may exceed the PET capabilities/funding level to
build sufficient understanding of this system. Projections regarding
the potential user community and hence the expected training audience
for SPEEDES might turn out to be too optimistic. If ARL wishes to host
these training modules for external access, it may be necessary for
them to acquire SPEEDES license. It may also be necessary to address
access control issues for the materials.

REQUIRED FUNDING LEVEL: