Keywords

Abstract

In modern defense training and simulation, interoperability and security remain critical challenges. The U.S. Department of Defense mandates the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) to ensure flexible, scalable, and vendor-agnostic solutions across LVC training environments. However, traditional simulation architecture standards struggle to provide real-time, secure, and multi-level data exchange required for distributed training. The Object Management Group (OMG) Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard is emerging as the backbone for next-generation MOSA-compliant defense training systems, providing high-performance, scalable, and secure interoperability.

This tutorial offers a comprehensive exploration of the DDS standard, showcasing its pivotal role in addressing the twin imperatives of interoperability and security within distributed LVC simulation environments. DDS stands as a cornerstone middleware solution, adept at facilitating hard real-time data distribution across diverse systems while providing robust security mechanisms to safeguard sensitive simulation data.

This tutorial will explore how DDS enables MOSA compliance, allowing defense training and simulation systems to transition from stovepiped architectures to open, composable, and modular frameworks. Attendees will gain insight into the layers of interoperability, understanding how DDS facilitates real-time, data-centric communication across LVC, cloud-based, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) systems.

Throughout the tutorial, participants will learn the fundamental principles of DDS, starting with its configuration for seamless integration with LVC simulations. From designing DDS entities and data models to fine-tuning performance and scalability through a suite of quality-of-service parameters, attendees will gain insights into harnessing DDS's capabilities to meet the diverse needs of distributed simulation environments.

A key focus will be on the DDS Security Standard, which provides built-in authentication, access control, encryption, and data tagging, allowing simulations to operate across multiple classification levels in joint, multi-domain, and coalition environments. Unlike traditional architectures that rely on external security overlays, DDS natively enforces security at the data level, enabling fine-grained control over information exchange.

Additionally, this tutorial will highlight DDS’s role in integrating with existing simulation frameworks and real-world DoD programs. Attendees will learn how DDS provides a high-performance real-time transport over WAN, RF, Tactical Data Links (TDL), and 5G, ensuring low-latency, secure data exchange for distributed LVC training.

By attending this session, participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of how DDS bridges the gap between operational and training systems, enabling secure and scalable distributed simulation architectures. Whether you are a simulation developer, integrator, or program manager, this tutorial will equip you with the knowledge to implement DDS for future-proof, secure, and interoperable training solutions.