CONTEMPORARY DEFENSE SIMULATION OUTLOOK

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1 SCS M&S Magazine. Vol 4. Issue 2. A. Tolk, F. Longo, and I. Moon (eds.) CONTEMPORARY DEFENSE SIMULATION OUTLOOK ABSTRACT Andrew Whitmore, Ph.D. Department of Information Systems and Decision Science University of South Florida Sarasota, FL, USA Simulation modeling has played an important role in modern military strategy and planning since the early 1900s. This relationship is alive and well today as U.S. military spending on commissioned simulation work has markedly increased over the last decade. Further, the private sector firms performing this simulation work on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense include numerous Fortune 500 companies. These companies are geographically distributed across the United States, providing ample opportunities for employment in defense-related simulation work for many U.S. practitioners regardless of geographic location. These findings suggest that defense funded simulation work in the Unites States is a fertile ground upon which simulation professionals can build their careers. 1 INTRODUCTION Simulation has a long history of use in the defense sector to model strategy, improve performance, and forecast the dynamics of military conflicts. The use of simulation in modern warfare dates back to the conflict models of Lanchester (1916) and the arms race models of Richardson (Richardson and Sutherland 1993; Giordano et al. 1997) in the early 1900s. Beyond academia, the commitment to military simulation is exemplified by the work being done at the U.S. Army s National Simulation Center (NSC), the Navy Modeling & Simulation Management Office (NAVMSMO), and the Air Force Agency for Modeling and Simulation (AFAMS), among others. The Occupational Outlook Handbook (2012) published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies simulation professionals as "Operations research analysts" whose responsibility it is to use, "statistical analysis, simulation, and optimization...to analyze information and develop practical solutions to business problems." 17% of operations research analysts work with the U.S. Federal Government and the majority of those individuals work for the U.S. Department of Defense (Occupational Outlook Handbook 2012). While much of the simulation work done by U.S. Department of Defense (US DOD) agencies is performed by active duty military personnel, the US DOD has spent up to several hundred million dollars per year over the last decade granting contracts to private contracting companies to perform simulation work on its behalf (USA Spending 2012). 1.1 Research Questions Given the importance of the US DOD as demand source for simulation work, this research seeks to answer three questions in order to illuminate the current state of defense related simulation activity: What patterns in contract spending are exhibited by the three branches of the U.S. Armed Forces (Army, Navy and Air Force)? Note: the Marine Corps is part of the Navy. How is US DOD contracting activity geographically distributed?

2 Who are some of the major private sector contracting firms operating in the field? 2 MATERIALS AND METHODS 2.1 Materials Historical data on US DOD contracts for the period was retrieved on July 31, 2012 from Each table was retrieved in comma separated value format and loaded into a MySQL database. Note: for reasons not explained on the site, the number of rows in contract tables is subject to periodic change, even for years well in the past. For example, on July 31, 2012 the table of US DOD contracts for 2005 contained rows. On August 2, 2012, the same table contained rows and on August 25, 2012 it contained rows. This research reflects the data as it existed on July 31, Methods The first research question asked, What patterns in contract spending are exhibited by the three branches of the U.S. Armed Forces (Army, Navy and Air Force)? In order to answer this question, the database was queried to return the total amount spent on Simulation contracts (product or service code of R412: SIMULATION ) by each armed forces branch in each year from The output of the query was written to a tab delimited file and imported into STATA 11 IC for analysis and visualization. The second research question asked, How is US DOD contracting activity geographically distributed? In order to answer this question, the database was queried to return the location information for each vendor who had received contracts for simulation work along with the total amount of money they received during the period. This information was input into ArcGIS Desktop. This contract data layer was loaded on top of a base layer map of the United States that is freely available from the U.S. Census Bureau. To provide context, a third layer including the locations of military installations within the United States was obtained from and incorporated into the map. The third research question asked, Who are some of the major private sector contracting firms operating in the field? This question did not require any further analysis. Rather, the table of the vendor s name, address and total contract amount generated while answering the second research question was used to make a table of major private contracting companies operating in the field. 3 RESULTS As shown in Figure 1, military spending on simulation contracts remained mostly level from and then began to increase around Data on the last complete year (2011) shows that simulation spending has fallen from peak levels but the US Army and US Air Force are still operating at much higher levels of spending on simulation work than they were in However, the US Navy has returned to the level of spending they exhibited in 2000.

Figure 1: Contract activity patterns of the three principle branches of the US Armed Forces As Figure 2 shows, simulation work is being done on behalf of the US DOD in many different states.

3 Figure 1: Contract activity patterns of the three principle branches of the US Armed Forces As Figure 2 shows, simulation work is being done on behalf of the US DOD in many different states. In particular, relatively dense clusters of activity were exhibited in the Northeast Corridor, California, the Pacific Northwest Corridor, Florida and Texas. Frequently, simulation modeling vendors are located near one or more military installations with the notable exception of the Midwest. Figure 2: Geographic distribution of simulation contracting activity (by vendor location)

4 Note: Hawaii had no vendors doing simulation work Table 1 illustrates that many large, prestigious companies are performing simulation work for the US DOD. These organization range from large, diversified fortune 500 companies to more narrowly focused specialized firms. As Figure 2 confirms, these vendors are located throughout the country suggesting the availability of simulation modeling employment opportunities in a wide array of locations. Table 1 provides contact information for a collection of the largest simulation vendors extracted from the data. Table 1: 20 Large simulation vendors VENDOR NAME ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP CODE MCDONNELL DOUGLAS CORPORATION LAMBERT ST. LOUIS AIRPORT SAINT LOUIS MO TRW INC 1800 GLENN CURTISS ST CARSON CA BOEING COMPANY 6200 J S MCDONNELL BLVD SAINT LOUIS MO LOCKHEED MARTIN INTEGRATED SYSTEMS 1210 MASSILLON ROAD PLANT AKRON OH CUBIC APPLICATIONS INC THIRD AVENUE SE STE. LACEY WA TYBRIN CORPORATION 1030 TITAN COURT FORT WALTON BEACH FL GRC INTERNATIONAL INC 1900 GALLOWS ROAD VIENNA VA NORTHROP GRUMMAN DEFENSE MISSION SYSTEMS SUNSET HILLS ROAD RESTON VA GENERAL DYNAMICS DECISION SYSTEMS RESEARCH PARKWAY SU ORLANDO FL BOEING SERVICE COMPANY GREENBELT RD # 757 LANHAM MD BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON INC 8283 GREENSBORO DR # 700 MC LEAN VA CUBIC APPLICATIONS INC 4550 THIRD AVENUE SE STE LACEY WA SYSTEMS APPLICATION & TECHNOLOGIES 2001 N SOLAR DR OXNARD CA CACI INCORPORATED FEDERAL PARK MEADOW DRIVE CHANTILLY VA LOGICON INC. 222 WEST 6TH STREET SAN PEDRO CA CAS INCORPORATED 100 QUALITY CIRCLE HUNTSVILLE AL SCIENCE APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL GENERAL DYNAMICS C4 SYSTEMS INCORPORATED BAE SYSTEMS APPLIED TECHNOLOGIES CAMPUS POINT DRIVE SAN DIEGO CA JOHN QUINCY ADAMS RD TAUNTON MA RESEARCH BLVD ROCKVILLE MD PLEXSYS INTERFACE PRODUCTS INC 4918 NE 122ND AVE PORTLAND OR CONCLUSIONS The results paint an optimistic picture of the future of US DOD funded simulation work. The amount of money being spent on simulation contracts has markedly increased over the last decade. Further, the private sector vendors benefiting from these contracts include many large, prestigious firms, many of which are located in the Northeast Corridor, California, the Pacific Northwest Corridor, Florida and Texas.

5 These locations are appealing to many and the larger salaries offered by fortune 500 firms suggest that the field is an attractive area in which to work in addition to being intellectually stimulating. These trends in simulation contract spending illustrate that the long relationship between simulation modeling and the defense sector continues to remain strong to this day. REFERENCES Giordano, F. R., Weir, M. D., Fox, W. P A First Course in Mathematical Modeling. Pacific Grove, California: Books/Cole Publishing Company. Lanchester, F. W Aircraft in Warfare. London: Constable. Occupational Outlook Handbook Operations Research Analysts. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Accessed August 8, Richardson, L. F., Sutherland, I. W Collected papers of Lewis Fry Richardson: 2. Cambridge: University Press. USA Spending Data Feeds. Accessed July 31, AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES ANDREW WHITMORE is an instructor in the Department of Information Systems and Decision Science at the University of South Florida, Sarasota. His research focuses on statistical, geospatial, and differential equation modeling using open government data. His address is awhitmore1@sar.usf.edu.

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