With the increasing use of Joint Live Virtual Constructive (JLVC) simulations, tightly-coupled simulations in JLVC environments continue to require considerable effort and resources to integrate federates into new versions of a Runtime Infrastructure (RTI) or High Level Architecture (HLA). The JCWC Team created an innovative "way ahead" for a Next Generation M&S Architecture paradigm to meet this challenge. This paradigm shift leverages benefits from Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs), cloud computing, intelligent agents, composable services and other forward-thinking next generation technologies. Combined, these technologies create acceptable and usable hybrid architectures to reduce JLVC resource requirements while increasing efficiency. A next generation M&S architecture standard is designed to resolve problems associated with tightly-coupled simulations within a federation, i.e. inflexibilities associated with change. Achieving a more efficient, loosely-coupled platform for future JLVC simulations will provide significant cost savings, increased capabilities and greater efficiency, particularly with legacy HLA and RTI upgrades.

This paper presents a three-phased plan to support implementation for a planned JLVC environment evolution. The cornerstone of Phase 1 is a cloud-based SOA web service. In this phase, a hybrid SOA infrastructure will leverage and extend an HLA-evolved framework. The hybrid SOA infrastructure will decouple the RTI functionality into common services available to all federates. Phase 2 will deliver decomposed models resulting in composable operational M&S services. Phase 3 will use next generation technology to employ intelligent agents, metadata and model bases to allow "on-the-fly" M&S solution development. Phase 3 will integrate technologies and capabilities not yet used by the DOD, but necessary to continually develop joint adaptive training environment-centric state-of-the-art solutions. A hybrid SOA M&S solution is the fundamental building block of the Next Generation M&S Architecture and is a key to transforming the JLVC and synthetic environment.