Simulating Network Warfare
NETWARS TOOL ENABLES COMMUNICATIONS PLANNERS TO TEST VARIOUS LOADS ON CURRENT AND PROPOSED COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS.
Recent analysis of the Battle of Britain has shown that, in spite of a smaller number of aircraft, the British managed to turn back the German onslaught through judicious use of resources. Radar was a key element, but just as important was the command-and-control system used by the British to interdict German aircraft far from their targets. A vital element of that system was communications. Without being able to reposition fighter assets, the value of radar would have been lost. This contrasts sharply with the Eastern front in World War II, where over half the fighter sweeps on both sides did not engage the enemy.
The Department of Defense continues to heavily invest in communications infrastructure to make it an agile, responsive enabler and weapon for today’s combat forces down to the tactical edge. Due to the complexities of today’s network, military planners need a simulation tool that enables them to virtually build out their communications infrastructure plans, and thereby identify capacity bottlenecks and single points of failure.
Also, the warfighter needs to rapidly predict the impact of battle damage on a network’s performance and validate potential restoral options. Network Warfare Simulation (NETWARS) is a simulation tool that was specifically designed for modeling military networks by allowing communications planners/ operators to test various loads on current and proposed communications networks before and during their use in real operations.
Modern military communications networks have unique properties and operating characteristics to address the combat environment. Active electronic protection design objectives—low probability of intercept, low probability of detection and anti-jam—create network behaviors that are not typical of commercial networks. Passive electronic protection objectives are achieved via communication doctrine, techniques, tactics and procedures.
Many, if not most, communication scenarios are significantly different from civilian communications systems and practices. The combat network environment also has system-level mechanisms that enforce communication precedence logical partitions consistent with command-and-control practices. The aggregate effect on tactical network behavior results in stochastic behaviors. No closed form solutions exist for modeling this or any other complex stochastic network environment because of traffic, network access delay algorithms, propagation variables and a host of other factors.
Since a closed-form solution (yielding accurate predictive analysis) is not practical or possible, discrete event simulation (DES) applications are used by network planners, designers and engineers to form predictive estimates of specific network behaviors. The NETWARS application provides a unique capability for planning military communications and predicting combat network behavior. NETWARS is one of the few DES applications that provides for U.S. military unique communication device models and systems.
Changing world conditions and U.S. force levels, structure and capability demand improvement in our ability to react globally, performing missions across the full range of military operations, using appropriate military capabilities organized in joint and combined forces. Forces could be deployed at any time with little or no advanced warning in response to a crisis anywhere in the world. At the same time, major advancements in information technology are providing the capability to disseminate ever-increasing volumes of information to the warfighter. Advancements in modeling and simulation technology provide the opportunity for rapidly assessing our capability to provide the right information to the right people at the right time.
INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENT
The mission of NETWARS is to provide integrated, readily available, operationally valid computer simulation environments for use by the Joint Staff, COCOMs, their components, other joint organizations and the services to assess the adequacy of their communications to support assigned missions, evaluate operational plans, define communications-related operational requirements and provide operational input to the acquisition process.
NETWARS is the state-of-the-art communication modeling and simulation tool that can be used by communication systems planners and analysts to assess the effects of full operational combat traffic loading on current and future communications systems and networks in a joint task force, major theater of war scenario; conduct quick turn-around communications planning for contingency operations including small regional conflicts and peacekeeping scenarios; and evaluate the impact of new communications technologies, organizational structures and operational concepts.
NETWARS offers a collaborative planning approach that allows the lead planner to distribute communications requirements to subordinate planners for resolution. The subordinate planners are expected to know what equipment and information requirements exist in their command, so they are better prepared to articulate these requirements. The lead planner, on the other hand, will better understand the theater assets. Through negotiation, a viable communications network is developed.
NETWARS supports the acquisition process by conducting end-to-end analyses of networks with new communication systems and C2 applications applied, reducing new system testing costs and risks, and providing empirical support for communication system acquisition decisions. NETWARS also fulfills the modeling and simulation requirements of the Joint Network Management System (JNMS) and Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES). Ultimately, NETWARS makes it possible for communications planners and analysts to validate their communication system support plans and assess their ability to execute them, enabling the warfighter to operate in a joint net-centric environment.
NETWARS has several libraries, which form the heart of the system. There are libraries with models of most commercial communications devices and more than 400 military unique devices, such as Promina, terrestrial systems, tactical radio systems, satellite systems, encryptions, circuit switches, IDNX and FCC-100. These form the basis for the development of operational facilities (OPFACs), which is a logical container of one or more connected devices. A military communications network model is a set of logically connected OPFACs. Using the cut and paste option, most large military units can be produced with relative ease.
Traffic is the Achilles heel of communications simulation tools. Finding realistic traffic can be a problem. NETWARS can utilize four different kind of traffic—information exchange requirements (IERs), standard or custom traffic application, network probes and network management data. IERs are the most basic kind of traffic, which represent information exchanges between various units. NETWARS come with an IER library, which can be manipulated for specific scenarios of interest.
NETWARS also allows the user to capture actual traffic on existing communications networks and replay that data. Lastly, it enables the user to generate traffic from applications under development using a tool called Applications Characterization Environment (ACE) from OPNET. This diversity of data mechanisms means that NETWARS will not be waiting for data to be collected.
FOREIGN USE
The NETWARS user base in the United States includes more than 500 registered users across 165 organizations and service agencies, and is being deployed to multiple JNMS locations. NETWARS is foreign military sale approved, and is currently used by four allied countries, two of which have mandated NETWARS as the modeling and simulation tool of choice for their defense ministry.
NETWARS has been used to quantify the benefits of technology transition of the USFK GCCS-K network, and analyze network performance of the USPACOM CONPLAN, including SIPRNet, NIPRNet, JWICS and CWAN, to provide recommendations on enhancements to bandwidth allocation. Recently, it also was used to assess the performance of NCES capabilities from a warfighter perspective and demonstrate the ability of NCES capabilities in an operational scenario to achieve end-to-end performance (service security, service discovery, messaging and collaboration) to support NCES Milestone B Exit Criteria.
The NETWARS Program Management Office provides a full range of user assistance to its customer base, including technical support, unlimited access to the NETWARS Web site, technical workshops and forums, computer-based training, classroom training and user conferences. In addition, NETWARS develops and maintains the Model Development Guide (MDG) to provide modeling guidelines and standards for creating communications device models that are interoperable with the NETWARS system and model suite.
The NETWARS MDG also provides the instructions for modifying existing OPNET COTS models to adhere to these standards to be interoperable with NETWARS. The MDG has entered the DoD standards process and can now be found in the DoD Information Technology Standards and Profile Registry (DISR) Online.
Due to its capability maturity, NETWARS will be transitioning to the Fee for Service program as of January 1, 2008. ♦
