Human decision-making fundamentally relies upon communications and networks to contain, extract, and disseminate time-sensitive, mission-relevant information to win decisively against opposing forces, particularly when engaged in asymmetrical combat. Future conflicts will involve attempts to disrupt information technology systems that are critical for communication and for assured operation of highly sophisticated weapons systems. This creates an urgent need for wargames to incorporate real-world cyber, communications and networking effects to support the development of effective operating concepts, capabilities, and plans. The complexity of a multi-domain, combined cyber and kinetic battlefield requires incorporation of high fidelity, physics based network digital twins into future wargaming environments to adequately account for potential impacts resulting from degraded network operations and/or cyber vulnerabilities on overall mission outcomes, improving the knowledge and insights gained from wargame execution. In order to do so effectively, the digital twin must have sufficient fidelity to accurately reflect the network dynamics due to the interplay between the communication protocol and topology, application traffic, the physical environment, and cyber attacks.
This paper will present a case study on the use of an innovative prototype to incorporate a high fidelity network digital twin into a wargaming environment. This prototype establishes an interface between the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division Next Generation Threat System operational mission models and Scalable Network Technologies EXata high fidelity cyber, communications and networking modeling and simulation software to incorporate connectivity and cyber vulnerability effects in support of pre-wargame benchmarking, outcome adjudication, and post-wargame analysis. The Department of Navy Modeling and Simulation Architecture Management Integration Environment is leveraged to provide a reliable and standards-compliant interface between NGTS and EXata. The resulting prototype capability enhances wargaming by incorporating cyber, communications and networking simulation to better assess overall mission outcomes.