ABSTRACT
The military has always been a very heavy user and innovative developer of modeling techniques and technologies. The nature of military missions requires that they rehearse missions to better understand their complex interactions and to estimate outcomes. This need has led them to apply modeling and simulation to a number of different activities over the last 300 years. In this chapter, we will explore the major applications of military modeling and will discuss the most common forms of dynamic modeling.
The U.S. military has made its own unique definitions of the terms “modeling” and “simulation.” For their purposes, modeling is often defined as, “a descriptive, functional, or physical representation of a system” (National Simulation Center, 2000). These representations may take the form of a mathematic equation, a logical algorithm, a three-dimensional digital image, or a partial physical mock-up of the system. Models are applied so widely that the variety of systems of interest is almost without bounds. In these systems, military weapons systems are usually very prominently represented, to include land, air, and sea vehicles; communications and radar equipment; handheld weapons; and individual soldiers. But models also represent the decision-making process and automated information processing that occurs inside the human brain and within battlefield computers. They extend to representations of the environment that is made up of terrain, vegetation, cultural features, the atmosphere, ocean, and radio frequency (RF) environment. Different combinations of all of these are needed to accurately represent potential military situations.
