Challenges
The CALIPSO project, developed in cooperation with Thales, aims at developing a decision-support tool for the French Army level 1 (Corps) and level 2 (Division) Command Posts, focusing on both high- and low-intensity operations. French Army Corps headquarters are organized in units, in particular G5, in charge of planning ground operations, and G35, in charge of planning their implementation. These two units operate on different time scales, respectively weeks and days. CALIPSO aims at providing G5 and G35 with a tool supporting course of action confrontation, while simulating the complex transitions from the high-intensity military operations phase to the low-intensity stabilization and normalization phases.
Solution
CALIPSO is made of two different simulations, one targeting the high-intensity phase, the other the low-intensity phase, the end result of one phase being used as initial conditions for the next. The high-intensity simulation operates at the Army Corps level (units are aggregated at the joint tactical group level) with a medium-grained physical representation (1 square per km², 1 tick every 10 minutes). Joint tactical group are represented using their operational functions, that are operated at the Brigade level. An 8-day confrontation between two Army Corps is simulated in roughly 15 minutes.
On the other side, CALIPSO innovative low-intensity simulation aims at studying EPOs (effect-based operations), by unfolding the causal relationships between a given desired effect and the operational levers that will cause it to occur, not only for military operations, but also for other operational aspects (civilian safety and health, etc.) This decision-support tool helps to analyze and test the various possible evolution scenarios corresponding to a given operational theater, and thus to refine operational strategies using indicators produced by the simulation.
In CALIPSO low-intensity simulation, there are no more terrain effects taken into account, but rather independent urban areas defined along several parameters (number of inhabitants, quality of infrastructures such as water, food, housing, health care, and energy supply), together with more complex inter-ethnic asymmetrical relationship models, evolving over time.
In fact, cities are represented as containers of a series of maneuvering actors (ie. conventional forces) and non-maneuvering actors, such as police, militia, infrastructure providers, mass media, etc. (some complex actors can be a mix of these), whose relative affinities evolve over time. This representation allows testing and analyzing operational scenarios, for example: How to satisfy the future needs of a given population? How to dispatch conventional forces in cities, and choose their operational mission? In the end, a dashboard, developed by Thales, sums up the situation with graphs and aggregated indicators.
Key benefits
- Effective simulation of high-intensity and low-intensity operational scenarios, while taking into account complex transitions between them.
- Detailed sociological and cultural simulation of complex urban phenomenons.
- Complete decision support tool for Army Corps level operation planning.