NATO Standards for Virtual Ships

The NATO Naval Armaments Group Sub-Group 61 on Virtual Ships has been chartered to establish NATO standards for modelling and simulation applied to ship acquisition. Its objective is to enable multi-national simulation re-use and interoperability, as well as simulation composability. Technical activity encompasses data modeling, runtime simulation, and process aspects of virtual ship representation. SG61 is responsible for development of a formal NATO standards document (STANAG) to codify its results. Currently a draft Virtual Ships STANAG is being written and reviewed. The draft STANAG describes the architecture and rules for NATO-standard virtual ship representation and the associated Virtual Ship development process. A series of annexes provide further details on realising the Virtual Ship, including: Federation Object Model (FOM), Federation Agreements, maritime natural environment representation, scenarios, and data & data structure requirements. A central tenet of the SG61 STANAG is establishment of a Virtual Ships Repository containing STANAG compliant assets (e.g., simulation components, FOMs,). The STANAG provides information templates and process guidance for using the Virtual Ships repository. This paper describes the SG61 technical programme of work, and discusses current progress and activities toward STANAG publication