The Live Virtual Constructive (LVC) Architecture Roadmap (LVCAR) report sponsored by the Modeling and Simulation (M&S) Steering Committee recommended several actions to promote the sharing of tools, data, and information across the Enterprise and to foster common formats and policy goals to promote interoperability and the use of common M&S capabilities. One of these recommended actions pertained to the development of a common suite of gateways and bridges capabilities.

This paper describes the Common Gateways and Bridges aspects of LVCAR implementation. The paper initially presents the outcome of a series of gateway and bridges community interviews, questionnaires, and workshops that gathered information on existing gateway and bridge capabilities and limitations. Following this is an analysis of gateway and bridge implementation paradigms. Lastly, an examination of emerging software technologies is presented that may lead to improving gateway and bridge robustness, performance, and reusability. In conclusion, an implementation plan for the incremental development, testing, and distribution of common gateway/bridge capabilities is presented that addresses the issues that were highlighted in our research.

The anticipated execution of this plan will reduce the costs associated with large multi-architecture LVC events and will result in more timely and robust test and training environments for our warfighters in the future.