OpenSIM (Open Simulation engine for Interoperable Models) for Weapons Effectiveness Analysis

As modern weapon systems become complex in dynamics and operational environments, evaluating their effectiveness becomes a hard task, accordingly. In order to analyze the effectiveness of a weapon system realistically, we have to consider not only dynamics of the weapon system, but also natural environments under which the weapons are operated, and operational strategies with which the weapons are utilized, as well. These factors are hard to control in real world, and thus, simulation technology has been massively used as an alternative for the effectiveness analysis. OpenSIM(Open Simulation Engine for Interoperable Models) is a simulation environment for weapons effectiveness analysis. OpenSIM provides 1) a modeling framework to represent weapon systems, environments and operational strategies, 2) various simulation services including scheduling, journaling, and logging, 3) linkage to other simulation systems, such as live and virtual simulators, and commercial engineering tools,. In this work, we present tools and services of OpenSIM and illustrate how OpenSIM can aid weapon engineers to perform complex modeling and simulation tasks for weapons effectiveness analysis.