Military Simulation Big Data: Background, State of the Art, and Challenges

Table 1

Overview of military big simulations.

(a) Simulation-related properties

Cases	Simulation level				The number of entities	The number of simulation replications	Model resolution	Time advancing	Simulation execution time
	C	M	E	G
Joint forces experiments	✓	✓	✓		Millions	Several	High	Real-time	Weeks
Data farming projects	✓	✓	✓		Dozens~hundreds	Thousands~millions	Low	Faster-than-real-time	Hours
COA analysis	✓	✓	✓		Thousands	Hundreds~thousands	Low; medium	Faster-than-real-time	Minutes; hours
Acquisition of new military system			✓	✓	A few	Tens of thousands	High	Faster-than-real-time or real-time	Days or weeks
SSN analysis				✓	Tens of thousands	Several	High	Faster-than-real-time	Days
Test and Evaluation of the THAAD system			✓	✓	A few	Several	High	Real-time	Months

Simulation level: C, campaign; M, mission; E, engagement; G, engineering.

(b) Data-related properties

Cases	Data contents	Data generation period	Data scale per experiment	Typical analytical application
Joint forces experiments	Sensor data, entity status (take Urban Resolve, e.g.)	1 ms	TB	Effectiveness of ISR sensor. Statistical result of mission execution
Data farming projects	Depend on specific problem and can involve all kinds of physical and behavioral data of simulated entities and battlefield events, such as damage and survival	<1 ms	GB~TB	Correlation, trend, and outlier analysis related to command and control, peacekeeping operation, combat, and so forth
COA analysis	Civil behavior, culture, weapon, terrain, killing, victims, and so forth	<1 sec	GB~TB	Task execution analysis, operational effectiveness analysis
Acquisition of new military system	Communication, sensor, command and control, weapon, and so forth	N/A	TB	Identify the key performance parameter, system level trade-off analysis, and MOE about raid, protect, detect, reaction, tracking, engagement, and so forth
SSN analysis	Sensor data and special events such as launch, breakup, and in-orbit	<1 sec	TB	MOP of sensor device
Test and evaluation of the THAAD system	Maneuver, sustainment, command and control, communication, radar track data, and so forth	N/A	TB	MOE, MOP of defense system