Rapid Prototyping during NATO Experimentation

As part of its ongoing effort to encourage rapid prototyping within NATO, the Allied Command Transformation Modelling and Simulation Section is actively involved in modelling and simulating at the multinational political/military level. Experimentation with multinational political concepts and at the military strategic level is inherently complicated and sensitive. Simulation can be used to not only rapidly prototype concept changes but also to derisk the cultural sensitivities that may be associated with live experimentation. During the NATO Crisis Management Exercise 06, conducted 1-7 March 2006, the Modelling and Simulation Section provided models and simulations, which aided concept developers conducting experimentation and studies. This paper will describe in detail the Crisis Management Exercise simulation effort and briefly explain the main follow on M&S effort which is different in nature. The primary experiment known as the NATO HQ Crisis Management Fusion Centre had an overall aim to enable decision coherence and included several sub-objectives. ExtendTM was used to simulate the concept and highlight metrics and areas for improvements. Due to the immediate significant need to provide improvements in the Enhanced CIMIC Transformational Objective Area, several follow on activities have begun including a separate modelling effort that was initiated dealing with information collaboration between NATO elements and Non-Governmental Organisations and International Organisations. This information collaboration is being modelled and simulated at all levels from strategic to tactical and across the policy, planning and operations domains. The goal is to create a synthetic environment in a battle laboratory where new procedures can be developed cooperatively to improve the civilian-military relationship during operations. This follow on effort is quite different from the first rapid prototype development effort but still uses several of the lessons learned to steer its progress.