Substantive interoperability between Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) assets has long been a "Holy Grail" for the Modeling & Simulation (M&S) community. Currently, however, the M&S community utilizes different standards that are not natively interoperable and in some cases competing in nature. In most cases, the current level of interoperability is attained through the use of numerous gateway applications, embedded middleware solutions, or approaches such as Federation Object Model (FOM) agreements. These solutions to technical interoperability, however, are sometimes prone to violating latency thresholds, significantly increase complexity, mistranslate data, and require large workarounds. The resources required to develop interoperable solutions has prompted the M&S user community to identify an explicit gap in the area referred to as Simulation Interoperability, particularly where interoperability between Live, Virtual and Constructive assets is desired.

In response, a US DoD M&S Steering Committee (SC) sponsored and funded study was established with the objective of developing an LVC Architecture Way Ahead (LVCWA). The study team is exploring and assessing a number of alternatives supporting simulation interoperability (at the technical level), business models, and the evolution process of standards management across the Department of Defense. This paper describes a plan for moving toward improved LVC interoperability based on the author's findings and recommendations assimilated from the study activities to date.