Digital Battlespace is a very fashionable term in international military slang in recent years. Along with "network-centric warfare", "situational awareness" (Situation Awarness) and other terms and concepts borrowed from the United States, it has become widespread in the domestic media. At the same time, these concepts were transformed into the views of the Russian military leadership about the future appearance of the Russian army, since Russian military science over the past twenty years, in his opinion, has not been able to offer anything equivalent.
According to the Chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, General of the Army Nikolai Makarov, said in March 2011 at a meeting of the Academy of Military Sciences, “we overlooked the development of methods, and then the means of armed struggle.” The leading armies of the world, according to him, have moved from "large-scale linear actions of multimillion armies to the mobile defense of a new generation of professionally trained armed forces and network-centric military operations." Earlier, in July 2010, the chief of the General Staff had already announced that the Russian army would be ready for network-centric hostilities by 2015.
However, an attempt to impregnate domestic military and industrial structures with the genetic material of "network-centric warfare" has so far yielded results that are only remotely similar to the "parental" appearance. According to Nikolai Makarov, “we went to reform the Armed Forces even in the absence of a sufficient scientific and theoretical base”.
The construction of a high-tech system without deep scientific study leads to inevitable collisions and destructive dispersal of resources. Work on the creation of automated command and control systems (ACCS) is being carried out by several defense industry organizations, each in the interests of “its own” type of the Armed Forces or a branch of the armed forces, “its own” level of command and control. At the same time, there is "confusion and hesitation" in the field of adopting common approaches to the system and technical foundations of ACCS, common principles and rules, interfaces, etc. »Information space of the RF Armed Forces.
Also, one should not forget about the position of a number of authoritative Russian military experts who believe that network-centric control principles are intended only for waging global wars with control from a single center; that the integration of all combatants into a single network is a fantastic and unrealizable concept; that the creation of a single (for all levels) picture of situational awareness is not necessary for combat formations of the tactical level, etc. Some experts note that "network centrism is a thesis that not only overestimates the importance of information and information technology, but at the same time is not able to fully realize the existing potential technological capabilities."
To present to the readers the Russian technologies used in the interests of network-centric combat operations, last year we visited the developer of the ESU TZ Voronezh concern Sozvezdiye (see Arsenal, No. 10-2010, p. 12), and recently we visited NPO RusBITech”, where they are engaged in modeling the processes of armed confrontation (VP). That is, they create a full-scale digital model of the battlefield.
“The effectiveness of network-centric warfare has grown enormously over the past 12 years. In Operation Desert Storm, the actions of a military group of over 500,000 people were supported by communication channels with a bandwidth of 100 Mbit / s. Today, a constellation in Iraq of less than 350,000 people relies on satellite links with a capacity of more than 3000 Mbps, which provides 30 times thicker channels for a 45% smaller constellation. As a result, the US Army, using the same combat platforms as in Operation Desert Storm, is operating with much greater efficiency today. Lieutenant General Harry Rog, Director of the Information Systems Defense Agency of the United States Department of Defense, commander of the Joint Task Force for the Global Network.
Viktor Pustovoy, Chief Advisor to the General Director of JSC NPO RusBITech, said that despite the formal youth of the company, which is three years old, the core of the development team has long been engaged in modeling various processes, including armed confrontation. These directions originated at the Military Academy of Aerospace Defense (Tver). Gradually, the scope of the company covered system software, application software, telecommunications, information security. Today, the company has 6 structural divisions, the team numbers over 500 people (including 12 doctors of sciences and 57 candidates of sciences), working at sites in Moscow, Tver and Yaroslavl.
Information modeling environment
The mainstream in today's activities of JSC NPO RusBITech is the development of an information modeling environment (IMS) to support decision-making and planning the use of operational-strategic, operational and tactical formations of the RF Armed Forces. The work is gigantic in its volume, extremely complex and knowledge-intensive in the nature of the tasks being solved, organizationally difficult, since it affects the interests of a large number of state and military structures, organizations of the military-industrial complex. Nevertheless, it is gradually advancing and acquiring a real form in the form of software and hardware complexes, which already now allow military command and control bodies to solve a number of tasks with previously unattainable efficiency.
Vladimir Zimin, Deputy General Director - Chief Designer of JSC NPO RusBITech, said that the team of developers came to the idea of ICs gradually, as work on modeling individual objects, systems and air defense control algorithms developed. Pairing different directions in a single structure inevitably required an increase in the necessary degree of generalization, hence the fundamental structure of the IC was born, which includes three levels: detailed (simulation of the environment and processes of armed confrontation), express method (simulation of airspace with a lack of time), potential (estimated, high the degree of generalization, with a lack of information and time).
The VP environment model is a virtual constructor within which a military scenario is played out. Formally, this is reminiscent of chess, in which certain figures participate in the framework of the given properties of the environment and objects. The object-oriented approach allows setting, within wide limits and with varying degrees of detail, the parameters of the environment, the properties of weapons and military equipment, military formations, etc. Two levels of detail are fundamentally different. The first one supports modeling the properties of weapons and military equipment, down to components and assemblies. The second one simulates military formations where weapons and military equipment is present as a set of certain properties of a given object.
Indispensable attributes of IC objects are their coordinates and status information. This allows you to adequately display the object on almost any topographic basis or in another environment, be it a scanned topographic map in the GIS "Integration" or a three-dimensional space. At the same time, the problem of generalizing data on maps of any scale is easily solved. Indeed, in the case of IMS, the process is organized naturally and logically: through the display of the necessary properties of the object by means of conventional symbols corresponding to the scale of the map. This approach opens up new opportunities in combat planning and decision-making. It is no secret that the traditional decision map had to be written with a voluminous explanatory note, in which it was revealed, in fact, what exactly stands behind one or another conventional tactical sign on the map. In the information and modeling environment developed by JSC NPO RusBITech, the commander just needs to look into the data associated with the object, or see everything “with his own eyes”, down to a small subdivision and a separate sample of weapons and military equipment, simply by enlarging the scale of the picture.
Esperanto Simulation System
In the course of work on the creation of IMS, the specialists of JSC NPO RusBITech required an ever higher level of generalization, at which it would be possible to adequately describe not only the properties of individual objects, but also their connections, interaction with each other and with the environment, conditions and processes, and See also other parameters. As a result, a decision arose to use a single semantics for describing the environment and exchange parameters, defining the language and syntax applicable to any other systems and data structures - a kind of "Esperanto modeling system".
So far, the situation in this area is very chaotic. In the figurative expression of Vladimir Zimin: “There is a model of an air defense missile system and a model of a ship. Put the air defense system on the ship - nothing works, they "do not understand" each other. Only recently did the chief executives on ACCS become concerned that there are no data models in principle, that is, there is no single language in which the systems could "communicate". For example, the developers of ESU TK, having gone from "hardware" (communications, AVSK, PTK) to the software shell, ran into the same problem. The creation of unified standards for the language for describing the modeling space, metadata, and scenarios is an obligatory step on the way of forming a unified information space of the RF Armed Forces, interfacing the ACCS of the Armed Forces, combat arms, and different levels of control.
Russia is not a pioneer here - the United States has developed and standardized the necessary elements for modeling airspace and the joint functioning of simulators and systems of various classes for a long time: IEEE 1516-2000 (Standard for Modeling and Simulation High Level Architecture - Framework and Rules - standard for modeling and simulation of architecture high-level framework, integrated environment and rules), IEEE 1278 (Standard for Distributed Interactive Simulation - standard for data exchange of spatially distributed simulators in real time), SISO-STD-007-2008 (Military Scenario Definition Language - combat planning language) and others … Russian developers are actually running along the same path, only lagging behind on the body.
Meanwhile, abroad they are reaching a new level, having begun to standardize the language for describing the processes of combat control of coalition groupings (Coalition Battle Management Language), for which a working group (C-BML Study Group) was created within the framework of the SISO (Organization for the Standardization of the Interaction of Modeling Spaces), which included the development and standardization units:
• CCSIL (Command and Control Simulation Interchange Language) - data exchange language for simulating command and control processes;
• C2IEDM (Command and Control Information Exchange Data Model) - data models of information exchange in the course of command and control;
• US Army SIMCI OIPT BML (Simulation to C4I Interoperability Overarching Integrated Product Team) - adaptation of the procedures of the American C4I control system by means of the combat control process description language;
• French Armed Services APLET BML - adaptation of the French control system procedures by means of the combat control process description language;
• US / GE SINCE BML (Simulation and C2IS Connectivity Experiment) - adaptation of the procedures of the joint US-German control system by means of the combat control process description language.
By means of the combat control language, it is planned to formalize and standardize planning processes and documents, command commands, reports and reports for use in existing military structures, for modeling airspace, and in the future - for controlling robotic combat formations of the future.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to "jump" over the mandatory stages of standardization, and our developers will have to go through this route completely. It will not work to catch up with the leaders by taking a shortcut. But to come out on a par with them, using the path trodden by the leaders, is quite possible.
Combat training on a digital platform
Today, interspecific interaction, unified combat planning systems, integration of reconnaissance, engagement and support assets into unified complexes are the basis for the gradually emerging new image of the armed forces. In this regard, ensuring the interaction of modern training complexes and modeling systems is of particular relevance. This requires the use of uniform approaches and standards for the integration of components and systems from different manufacturers without changing the information interface.
In international practice, procedures and protocols for high-level interaction of modeling systems have long been standardized and described in the IEEE-1516 (High Level Architecture) family of standards. These specifications became the basis for the NATO standard STANAG 4603. The developers of JSC NPO RusBITech have created a software implementation of this standard with a central component (RRTI).
This version has been successfully tested in solving the problems of integrating simulators and modeling systems based on HLA technology.
These developments made it possible to implement software solutions that combine into a single information space the most modern methods of training troops, classified abroad as Live, Virtual, Constructive Training (LVC-T). These methods provide for different degrees of involvement of people, simulators and real weapons and military equipment in the process of combat training. In the advanced foreign armies, complex training centers have been created, fully providing training according to the LVC-T methods.
In our country, the first such center began to be formed on the territory of the Yavoriv training ground of the Carpathian military district, but the collapse of the country interrupted this process. For two decades, foreign developers have gone far ahead, so today the leadership of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation made a decision to create a modern training center on the territory of the training ground of the Western Military District with the participation of the German company Rheinmetall Defense.
The high pace of work once again confirms the relevance of the creation of such a center for the Russian army: in February 2011, an agreement was signed with a German company on the design of the center, and in June, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and the head of Rheinmetall AG Klaus Eberhard signed an agreement on the construction on the basis of a combined-arms training ground Western Military District (Mulino village, Nizhny Novgorod region) of the modern Training Center of the Russian Ground Forces (TsPSV) with a capacity for a combined-arms brigade. The agreements reached determine that construction will begin in 2012, and commissioning will take place in mid-2014.
The specialists of JSC NPO RusBITech are actively involved in this work. In May 2011, the Moscow division of the company was visited by the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces - First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Nikolai Makarov. He got acquainted with the software complex, which is considered as a prototype of a unified software platform for the implementation of the LVC-T concept in the center of combat and operational training of a new generation. In accordance with modern approaches, education and training of servicemen and units will be carried out on three cycles (levels).
Field training (Live Training) is carried out on a regular weapons and military equipment equipped with laser simulators of shooting and destruction and coupled with a digital model of the battlefield. In this case, the actions of people and equipment, including the maneuver and fire of direct-fire means, are carried out in situ, and other means - either due to "mirror projection" or by modeling in a simulation environment. "Mirror projection" means that artillery or aviation subunits can carry out tasks at their ranges (sectors), in the same operational time with subunits in the Centralized Command and Control System. Data on the current position and results of the fire in real time are fed to the CPSV, where they are projected onto the real situation. For example, air defense systems receive data on aircraft and WTO.
The data on fire damage received from other ranges are transformed into the degree of destruction of personnel and equipment. In addition, artillery in the Centralized Troops Forces can shoot at areas away from the actions of combined arms subunits, and data on the defeat will be mirrored onto real subunits. A similar technique is used for other means, the use of which in conjunction with ground forces units is excluded due to security requirements. Ultimately, according to this technique, the personnel operate on real weapons and military equipment and simulators, and the result depends almost exclusively on practical actions. The same methodology makes it possible, in live-fire exercises, to work out fire missions in full for all staff, attached and supporting forces and assets.
The joint use of simulators (Virtual Training) ensures the formation of military structures in a single information-modeling space from separate training systems and complexes (combat vehicles, aircrafts, KShM, etc.). Modern technologies, in principle, make it possible to organize joint training of territorially dispersed military formations at any theater of operations, including by the method of bilateral tactical exercises. In this case, the personnel practically operate on simulators, but the technique itself and the action of the means of destruction are simulated in a virtual environment.
Commanders and control bodies usually work completely in the information and modeling environment (Constructive Training) during command post exercises and trainings, tactical flights, etc. In this case, not only the technical parameters of weapons and military equipment, but also subordinate military structures, as well as the adversary, collectively representing the so-called computer forces. This method is the closest in meaning to the topic of war games (Wargame), which have been known for several centuries, but found a "second wind" with the development of information technology.
It is easy to see that in all cases it is necessary to form and maintain a virtual digital battlefield, the degree of virtuality of which will vary depending on the teaching methodology used. The open system architecture based on the IEEE-1516 standard allows flexible configuration changes depending on the tasks and current capabilities. It is quite likely that in the near future, with the massive introduction of onboard information systems in AME, it will be possible to combine them in the training and learning mode, eliminating the consumption of expensive resources.
Expansion into combat control
Having received a working digital model of the battlefield, the specialists of JSC NPO RusBITech thought about the applicability of their technologies for combat control. The simulation model can form the basis of automation systems for displaying the current situation, express forecasting of current decisions during a battle, and transmitting combat control commands.
In this case, the current situation in its troops is displayed on the basis of information received automatically in real time (RRV) about their position and condition, down to small subdivisions, crews and individual weapons and military equipment units. Algorithms for generalizing such information are, in principle, similar to those already used in ICs.
Information about the enemy comes from reconnaissance assets and subunits in contact with the enemy. Here, there are still many problematic issues related to the automation of these processes, the determination of the reliability of data, their selection, filtering, and distribution over management levels. But in general terms, such an algorithm is quite realizable.
Based on the current situation, the commander makes a private decision and issues combat control commands. And at this stage, the IMS can significantly improve the quality of decision-making, since it allows using the high-speed express method to "play out" the local tactical situation in the near future. It is not a fact that such a method will allow you to make the best possible decision, but it is almost certain to see the knowingly losing one. And then the commander can immediately give a command that excludes the negative development of the situation.
Moreover, the model for drawing action options works in parallel with the real-time model, only receiving initial data from it and in no way interfering with the functioning of the other elements of the system. Unlike the existing ACCS, where a limited set of computational and analytical tasks is used, the IC allows you to play out almost any tactical situation that does not fall outside the boundaries of reality.
Due to the parallel functioning of the RRV model and the simulation model in the IC, a new method of combat control is possible: predictive and advanced. A commander who makes a decision during a battle will be able to rely not only on his intuition and experience, but also on the forecast issued by the simulation model. The more accurate the simulation model is, the closer the forecast is to reality. The more powerful the computing means, the greater the lead over the enemy in combat control cycles. On the way to creating the combat control system described above, there are many obstacles to be overcome and very non-trivial tasks to be solved. But such systems are the future, they can become the basis of the automated command and control system of the Russian army of a truly modern, high-tech appearance.
