Simulation-Based Military Training

Abstract

Simulation is strongly related to the Military Sector, indeed Computer Simulation has been effectively applied to Defense and Aerospace since the end of the World War II and John McLeod, founder of the Society for Computer Simulation International (SCS), applied it to Rocket Science and Aeronautics in early ’50, quite a while before the advent of digital computers (McLeod in Simulation: the dynamic modeling of ideas and systems with computers. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1968). Today, after half a century, military users still represent the major stream for M&S developments. Indeed, there is a good reason why Modeling and Simulation (M&S) is so popular in Defense: this context provides usually very challenging problems with many variables and interactions, stochastic factors and heavily nonlinear systems; in addition, it is an area where competition (not necessarily commercial) pushes the innovative solutions to the edge, so all these aspects promote simulation as leading science to achieve successful results. This chapter is focused on New Challenges and Opportunities in this domain.