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Abstract- The Advanced Framework for Simulation, Integration and Modeling (AFSIM) is an engagement and mission level simulation environment written in C++ originally developed by Boeing and now managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). AFSIM was developed to address analysis capability shortcomings in existing legacy simulation environments as well as to provide an environment built with more modern programming paradigms in mind. AFSIM can simulate missions from subsurface to space and across multiple levels of model fidelity. The AFSIM environment consists of three pieces of software: the framework itself which provides the backbone for defining platforms and interactions, an integrated development environment (IDE) for scenario creation and scripting, and a visualization tool called VESPA. AFSIM also provides a flexible and easy to use agent modeling architecture which utilizes behavior trees and hierarchical tasking called the Reactive Integrated Planning aRchitecture (RIPR). AFSIM is currently ITAR restricted and AFRL only distributes AFSIM within the DoD community. However, work is under way to modify the base architecture facilitating the maintenance of AFSIM versions across multiple levels of releasability.
Index Terms- Simulation Framework, Mission Level Model, Artificial Intelligence Framework, Agent Framework
I. INTRODUCTION
AFSIM is a government-approved C++ simulation framework for use in constructing engagement and missionlevel analytic simulations for the Operations Analysis community, as well as virtual experimentation. The primary goal of AFSIM applications is the assessment of new system concepts and designs with advanced capabilities not easily assessed within traditional engagement and mission level simulations. Development activities include modeling weapon kinematics, sensor systems, electronic warfare systems, communication networks, advanced tracking, correlation, and fusion algorithms, and automated tactics and battle management software.
In this section, the reasons for the development and history of AFSIM are presented. The next section provides an overview of the AFSIM architecture, integrated development environment, visualization tools and AFSIM's agent modeling architecture. The following section highlights the current/planned effort to create a Component Based Architecture for AFSIM which will allow multiple levels of releasability. The last section provides a conclusion on AFSIM and its current state.
A. Background
AFSIM is based on The Boeing Company's Analytic Framework for Network-Enabled Systems (AFNES). Under contract, Boeing delivered AFNES to the Air Force (specifically AFRL/RQQD) with unlimited rights, including source code, in February 2013....