History of Combat Modeling and Distributed Simulation

Abstract

This chapter presents a brief history of both combat modeling and distributed simulation. It is presented in two broad sections: the first covers the long history of combat modeling and mock warfare, and the second discusses the developments within the 20th century that have led to the modern state of distributed simulation for combat modeling. The distributed simulation has augmented, or in some cases replaced, the traditional methods of wargaming and simulating combat. There are two types of characteristics that distinguish the basic patterns of communication in distributed simulations: communication mechanisms and event synchronization. The most widely used live, virtual, and constructive (LVC) simulation architectures in the DoD are distributed interactive simulation (DIS), high level architecture (HLA), and test and training enabling architecture (TENA). The chapter gives a brief description of each architecture and then characterizes its approach for communication and event synchronization. Controlled Vocabulary Terms Modeling and simulation