The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), along with many other defence organisations around the world including NATO, increasingly promotes the use of a variety of standards within simulator based systems. This initiative is part of an UK pan-defence enterprise approach to reduce total lifecycle costs, and increasing reuse and interoperability called Defence Modelling and Simulation Coherence (DMaSC).

This paper describes the practical application of simulation standards through the development lifecycle of a typical fielded simulator based training system – the AJAX armoured fighting vehicle driver training simulators – the first practical example within the UK of a new approach to mandating standards within training system acquisition requirements.

While familiar interoperability standards such as DIS and HLA have been successfully integrated many times; the authors (from industry and government) describe the integration and use of newer and less well-known standards such as the Common Image Generator Interface v4 (CIGI) and various terrain repository formats, along with the technical and commercial issues around government custodianship of geospatial data and the derived terrain and model datasets.

The authors share insights on successes, areas for improvement, and necessary compromises from the work carried out in developing a highly complex simulator based training device within the typical environment of a lengthy development lifecycle and a multi-level supply chain.

The lessons learned will help industry developers and government procurement agencies to work more closely together in this important area and achieve the objectives of reduced cost and better reuse and interoperation.

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Grant Bailey