Assessing impacts of communications on campaign-level warfare: online and offline co-simulations

Impacts of improvements of networking/communications on warfare at the campaign level can be simulated and studied by coupling a campaign-level warfare simulation with detailed networking/communications simulation(s). Online and offline co-simulations are two common approaches. The online co-simulation approach is the federation, usually performed using the high level architecture (HLA). The offline co-simulation approach relies on pre-processed data for input. The purpose of this paper is to present analytic models applicable to terrestrial and satellite communications to demonstrate the importance of dynamic interactions that are often overlooked in the offline co-simulation approach but inherent in networks and routing mechanisms and embodied in the online co-simulation approach. Consequently, the paper demonstrates the utility of the online co-simulation (federation) approach in dynamic warfighting environments