The 705th Exercise Control Squadron (EXS), the Air Force Distributed Mission Operations Center (DMOC), located at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, conducts four Virtual Flag distributed training exercises each year. The exercises focus on Tactical Command and Control (C2) Mission Operations Training. The Air Force Command and Control Wing (CCW), formerly the Air Force Command and Control Training Innovation Group (AFC2TIG), located at Hurlburt Field, Florida, conducts four Blue Flag exercises per year, which support Operational C2 Mission Operations Training. A decision has been made to merge the Virtual Flag, tactical level exercises, with the Blue Flag, operational level exercises. The combined exercise will fulfill both operational and tactical training objectives.
To fulfill both training objectives, the environment generators that create air and ground tracks, or entities, must also merge. One way to merge these simulations is to transfer control of appropriate, selected air and ground entities from the operational environment generator to the tactical environment generator, thus taking advantage of each simulation's strengths. Transfer of control between operational and tactical simulations was demonstrated during Virtual Flag 03-3 and Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment (JEFX) 04 System Integration Test 1. The participating sites were the DMOC and the CCW. Control of Air Warfare Simulation (AWSIM) aircraft was transferred to the Next Generation Threat System (NGTS), using the Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) Transfer Control Request, Set Data, and Acknowledge Protocol Data Units (PDU)s. NGTS then applied higher fidelity engagement and radar models to the aircraft, and engaged tactical-level virtual simulators. Once tactical training was completed, the aircraft were transferred back to AWSIM to continue with operational training support. All aircraft and associated parameters were transferred successfully.
This paper presents how the AWSIM and NGTS simulations transferred control of aircraft, thereby, supporting both tactical and operational training requirements.