NATO HLA Certification

Abstract : The Report from the NATO Modelling and Simulation Steering Group approved by the North Atlantic Council establishes the need for a common (open standard) technical framework (CTF) to promote the interoperability and reuse of models and simulations across the Alliance. MSMP Sub-objective 1.1, "Adopt the High Level Architecture (HLA) as the NATO standard technical architecture for simulation applications," provides the best available technical architecture to satisfy this need. HLA is recognized as a critical and necessary enabler for the interoperability and reuse of simulations. There is a need to acquire some guarantee that so-called "HLA-based" simulations are, in fact, HLA-compliant in accordance with applicable standards in order to attain those stages of interoperability and reuse. This report compares three different solutions to implement a NATO certification capability. The recommended solution is to establish national capabilities within voluntary nations. In order to co-ordinate and supervise this distributed implementation, it is required to establish a users/testers group to be created within the NMSG organization.