IFAD has been awarded a contract to participate in the MSG-164 NATO project ‘Modelling and Simulation as a Service (MSaaS)’. Through international cooperation with other NATO nations and organisations, the project aims to develop and test a concept for identification and integration of cloud based simulation services, and to obtain seamless connectivity and interoperability for distributed training across forces.

More information about the NATO's MSG-164 project here (>)

The Danish Defense is in possession of a number of simulation-based training systems within the navy, the air force and the army. Long-term strategic goals are to obtain a seamless connectivity and interoperability between these systems in order to undertake distributed training within and across the forces, as well as international combined distributed training with partner nations.

However, practical experience shows that seamless connectivity and interoperability are not necessarily easily achievable. Achieving interoperability between participating systems and ensuring result-credibility require significant efforts with regards to time, personnel, and budget. There seems to be a need for simulation standards, agreements and reference architectures focusing on higher levels of interoperability and simulation credibility.

Through participation in the NATO NMSG ‘Modelling and Simulation as a Service (MSaaS), Phase 2’ project called MSG-164, the Danish Defense and IFAD will join an international forum consisting of NATO members and associated nations as well as NATO bodies and leading industrial partners in the defense industry. This will make it possible to establish a common understanding of the modelling and simulation domain services in distributed simulation environments and to gain insight into current organizational structures and processes with respect to service-based M&S.

The MSG-164 project will build upon results from a previous project “Proof of Concept for a Service Based Training Network”. Through participation in the NATO MSG-136 project, this project showed that a service based training network will support the Danish Defense long-term goals. However, there is still a need to clarify how best to discover and compose services into usable training solutions. This goal will be achieved by participation in the MSG-164 project.

Project activities will collect and share experiences in establishing MSaaS capabilities, and establish a permanent MSaaS infrastructure that will be available for use in operationally relevant environments.