Overview#
An exercise control team running a large-scale NATO training event has to keep DIS entity feeds, HLA federation status, JANUS acoustic traffic, and NPIF imagery ingestion all functioning simultaneously. Each standard lives in a different part of the platform, and switching between them during a fast-moving scenario takes attention away from exercise management. The Simulation Interoperability Workbench consolidates those surfaces so exercise controllers can supervise the full interoperability picture from one place.
The workbench is designed for exercise controllers and simulation operators who need visibility into distributed simulation standards, protocol bridges, and message interoperability during training and mission rehearsal. It brings together DIS, HLA RTI, JANUS, NPIF, and structured messaging utilities so that exercise teams can confirm that all simulation systems are communicating correctly without navigating between separate modules.
Open Standards#
- IEEE 1278.1 (Distributed Interactive Simulation): The workbench ingests raw DIS Entity State Protocol Data Units, parses them into platform entities, and persists them for exercise health monitoring.
- IEEE 1516.1 (High Level Architecture): Federation status, federate counts, and NETN-Entity object instances are polled from a Portico RTI via the HLA management interface and surfaced in the federation object view.
- STANAG 4748 / ANEP-87 (JANUS): JANUS acoustic packets are decoded using cargo-class identifiers from ANEP-87 Table 6, enabling subsurface track and AUV coordination data to appear alongside land, air, and sea entities.
- STANAG 7023 (NATO Primary Image Format, NPIF): Airborne imagery files are validated against the NPIF magic number and their segment headers parsed per STANAG 7023 Edition 3, extracting mission, platform, sensor, and security-classification metadata.
- STANAG 5500 / ADatP-3 (NATO Message Text Format): The structured-messaging panel parses and builds ADatP-3 message sets (INTSUM, SITREP, INTREP, OPREP-3, LOCSTAT, MEDEVAC) carried over MTFXML, linking simulation activity to operational reporting formats.
- SISO-REF-010 (Enumerations for Modelling and Simulation): HLA NETN-Entity attributes including EntityType and ForceIdentifier are interpreted using the SISO-REF-010 enumeration catalogue, ensuring consistent force-side labelling across DIS and HLA feeds.
- GraphQL: All workbench data surfaces, federation polls, and entity queries are exposed through a GraphQL API, with Strawberry-typed schemas for HLA federations, DIS units, and simulation health data.
Last Reviewed: 2026-03-24 Last Updated: 2026-04-14
Key Features#
- Distributed Simulation Standards Support: Brings DIS and HLA RTI surfaces into a unified workbench for exercise and simulation operations, removing the need to navigate between separate modules during live exercises.
- Scenario and Platform Interop: Includes JANUS and related specialist simulation workflows used in mission rehearsal and experimentation, covering the subsea dimension alongside land, air, and sea scenarios.
- Product and Reporting Alignment: Supports NPIF and structured-output workflows that connect simulation activity to intelligence or operational reporting formats for post-exercise analysis.
- Message and Protocol Bridges: Keeps simulation-linked messaging services close to simulation control workflows for faster troubleshooting and validation when message flow degrades.
- Exercise Controller Preset: Provides a focused preset for simulation teams rather than requiring manual assembly of a mixed dashboard before each exercise event.
Use Cases#
- Exercise Control Room Operations: Controllers monitor simulation services, interoperability posture, and supporting message channels during live exercises without losing situation awareness across standards.
- Mission Rehearsal Support: Training teams align synthetic activity with operational message and reporting standards before real-world execution.
- Interoperability Testing: Technical operators validate whether different simulation components are exchanging data correctly across the active protocol set.
- Standards Compliance Review: Simulation leads confirm that outputs from exercises can be consumed by downstream operational or intelligence systems.
Integration#
- DIS IEEE 1278 and HLA RTI simulation standards
- JANUS scenario and simulation tooling
- NPIF and message/reporting utilities
- Tactical and messaging workbenches for operational interoperability