The need for credible Modeling and simulation in the context of the network based defense

In concert with numerous other western world nations, in Sweden military doctrine is changing focus from a platform-oriented towards a network-based approach. Military platforms become participants in "the network", share information, and provide services that allow them to sense, decide, and act beyond their individual capabilities in a cooperative and distributed manner. The information exchange occurs through an information infrastructure, the so called "infostructure" which constitutes a communication network spanned by the participating nodes. Although technologically not far beyond the edge of today's state of the art, are functional and technological requirements on the infostructure high: Mobile units exposed to lethal threats and electronic countermeasures shall connect and disconnect rapidly and reliably to build networks in an adhoc manner, ensuring secure and fault tolerant communication with sufficiently high quality of service. Nodes in the infostructure consist of heterogeneous systems provided by numerous nations, providing various types of end-user and communication services. Various alternative approaches can be taken for the creation of the infostructure, which must be expected to become a highly complex system, challenging to control and administrate. Modeling and Simulation are considered to be the mandatory enablers to optimize its design, maintenance, use, and improvement. This concept paper describes a vision of the infostructure, operational conditions, and desired properties, and identifies challenges which must be met on order to early avoid dead-end roads. Finally, it outlines application areas for communication related Modeling and Simulation to support the transition to and continuous improvement of a Network Based Defense.