The DoD has a huge inventory of models and simulation, which have many overlaps in terms of functional capabilities.
In today’s resource constrained environment, the DoD and the Services must make informed decisions about what
models and simulations to continue to support. Thus the ability to perform functional assessments and analyses of
currently fielded and planned simulations takes on great significance. In I/ITSEC 2013 Paper No. 13065 (Scrudder et
al, 2013) defined an analytic framework to compare the functionality of two constructive entity-based simulations.
This paper extends the work of Scrudder et al. by presenting an instantiation of that framework with data from the
OneSAF simulation framework and the JCATs simulation.
Reviewing a total of 116 factors across 23 categories (e.g., entity movement, weapons effects, communications, nonkinetic
effects, etc.) through a methodic approach, the researchers identified no significant differences in the
functionality of 60 factors (52%). This paper and presentation will also identify the superior functional capabilities
where they exist, as well as report lessons learned from the process.
This type of analysis is critical to comprehensive portfolio analysis, efficient migration to cloud-based computing
paradigms, and compliance with various DoD CIO initiatives in data center consolidation and application
rationalization. While this study focused specifically on OneSAF and JCATS, the framework is applicable to any
simulations in the entity-based brigade and below portfolio, and the broader methodology is applicable to many classes
of simulations.