All Players - Modular & Scalable Architectures for Joint Simulation and Wargaming

Background and Problem Statement:

The Department of War lacks the ability to rehearse, validate and iterate Operational Plans (OPLANs) for contested, multi-domain conflict at the scale and speed required for modern warfare.

The government is constructing dedicated facilities to support the required scale of virtual training and mission rehearsal. However, these facilities impose strict constraints on physical footprint, power, cooling, and sustainment. They also require modularity and rapid reconfigurability across multiple mission platforms and classification levels, thereby limiting the utility of existing large, monolithic, and platform-specific simulators.

To address this gap, the Department seeks modular and scalable simulation and training architectures for military platforms that enable 100+ players to exercise and rehearse within a shared synthetic battlespace.

Desired Attributes:

The Department seeks solutions that break the mold of monolithic aircraft simulator system architectures by:

• Decoupling the operator interface from aircraft-specific, proprietary, or tightly-coupled software implementations.
• Enabling reconfigurable, platform-agnostic cockpit architectures leveraging centrally hosted virtual aircraft services and shared synthetic environment components
• Supporting rapid scenario generation and iteration, scalable force-ratio flexibility, and secure multi-level security across networks. 

All solutions must be compatible with, and integrable into, the Joint Simulation Environment (JSE) Technical Baseline (JTB). Amplifying and clarifying information on JSE services will be provided to offerors in subsequent phases. 

Successful prototypes may be considered for fielding at the U.S. Air Force Joint Integrated Test and Training Center – Elmendorf (JITTC-E), other joint training and test facilities, or any other relevant mission, training, or battle network architecture.

This opportunity includes three solution paths. Vendors may propose against Solution Path I, Solution Path II, Solution Path III, or any combination of the three. Offerers are encouraged to focus technical capabilities toward individual solution paths. Please submit a separate solution brief for each Solution Path. 

Solution Path I: Joint Simulation Environment (JSE) Agnostic Training System (JATS)

Existing aircraft simulator implementations tightly couple cockpit hardware, aircraft software, and display systems into monolithic, platform-specific architectures that cannot scale for large force virtual training and rehearsal.

The department seeks modular training architectures that separate:

• Operator-machine interface (i.e. fighter agnostic cockpit (FAC))
• Aircraft mission systems, vehicle logic, dynamics (i.e. Virtual Aircraft Services (VAS))
• Out-the-window (OTW) image generation services (IGS)
• Shared synthetic environment (i.e. JSE)

The main focus of Solution Path I is the Fighter Agnostic Cockpit (FAC) concept. 

Solutions for the FAC should provide a reconfigurable, hardware agnostic and software-defined cockpit, capable of supporting multiple fighter aircraft types. Solutions should orient capabilities around a tactical/mission training use case as opposed to basic airmanship training.

Additionally, solutions should:

• Emphasize low Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWAP-C) to enable dense facility layouts
• Support rapid session provisioning and platform reassignment
• Enable seamless integration with JSE, including real-time synchronization of scenario data and entity state
• Maintain necessary human-machine interaction to include:
  • Representative physical and/or virtual cockpit controls needed to execute tactical/mission scenarios
  • Support display feeds and symbology/sensor fusion representations from external virtual aircraft services
  • Support helmet-mounted cueing systems (e.g., HMCS equivalents)

Proposed solutions should ensure compatibility with extended reality (XR), head-mounted displays (HMDs) (or alternative compact display technologies), to the maximum extent feasible, while addressing human factors challenges such as comfort, fatigue, and usability during extended training events. For more details on display system objectives, see Solution Path II.

Offerors are encouraged to propose multiple FAC user interface concepts with varying levels of fidelity, technical maturity, and risk to enable informed trade-space evaluation during prototyping.

In addition to the FAC concept, offerors may propose solutions that provide or enable additional capability related to Virtual Aircraft Services (VAS) and Image Generation Services (IGS) that complement the overall JATS architecture described above. These capabilities may be proposed as standalone solutions or as integrated components within a broader system.

For the purposes of this project, Virtual Aircraft Services (VAS) refer to the modular, software-defined representations of aircraft systems and behaviors, including mission systems and vehicle dynamics, that can be hosted independently of the cockpit interface and integrated with the JSE Technical Baseline (JTB). The government seeks solutions that serve as capability force multipliers, enabling rapid integration of additional Mission Design Series (MDS) platforms and their components into the JSE ecosystem.

Proposed Virtual Aircraft Services (VAS) solutions should:

• Provide open development frameworks and toolchains (e.g. SDKs, APIs, component libraries) that enable third-party government or industry engineers to rapidly build, integrate, and extend existing capability into JSE. 
• Support a service-oriented or containerized architecture, allowing platform subsystems (e.g. sensors, weapons, flight dynamics) to be independently developed, deployed, and sustained.
• Enable integration with JSE through standardized adapters, interfaces, and data models
• Provide abstraction and data normalization layers to translate between cockpit interfaces and aircraft system representations.

For the purposes of this project, Image Generation Services (IGS) are responsible for rendering the operator’s visual perspective of the synthetic environment based on the authoritative state provided by JSE and associated simulation services.

Proposed IGS solutions should:

• Provide open architecture, scalable image generation capabilities that integrate with JSE-provided environment and entity data 
• Support low-latency, high-fidelity rendering suitable for tactical aviation use, including compatibility with XR, VR, and mixed reality display systems 
• Enable decoupling of rendering from aircraft and cockpit implementations, allowing independent evolution of visual systems 
• Support multi-resolution and mission-dependent rendering, optimizing performance based on platform type, training objectives, or user access rights.
• Minimize local compute requirements through centralized or distributed rendering architectures. 
• Maintain accurate spatial alignment and stability of rendered symbology and external scene elements under head-tracked viewing conditions. 

Solution Path II: Cockpit display systems

Large-scale, reconfigurable training environments require compact, immersive, and interactive display technologies capable of replacing traditional large format displays.  

The department seeks to significantly advance the state of the art in compact head-mounted hardware devices and associated software optimized for military aircraft simulation use-cases, including long-duration tactical training events, high workload human-machine interaction, and integration with the software-defined cockpit architectures described in Solution Path I while minimizing negative training.

Proposed solutions should emphasize advancement in the following capability areas:

• Display performance
• Human factors and endurance
• Virtual interaction and spatial registration
• Security

Ongoing external efforts will inform and refine the understanding and definitions of the above attributes as this effort proceeds. Offerors should demonstrate the ability to apply agility and rapid adaptation during development to address incoming refinement of requirements and human factors related scientific understanding.

Solution Path III: Data Orchestration

The Department seeks resilient and scalable solutions that enable secure, policy-compliant data access, exchange, and propagation across classification boundaries while maintaining high performance and low latency.

Within the Joint Simulation Environment (JSE), simulation interactions and propagation effects are currently orchestrated through the Global Reusable Interface Domain (GRID), a government-owned integration framework that provides authoritative, physics-based synchronization and interaction services across participating simulation entities, platforms, sensors, weapons, and environments.

Future operational concepts introduce additional requirements for dynamic data governance, heterogeneous user populations, coalition interoperability, and real-time policy enforcement across mixed-classification simulation environments. GRID is not currently designed for orchestration of mixed-classification messages and data. Therefore, the Department seeks solutions that extend or augment GRID-enabled architectures with capabilities including:

• fine-grained data tagging and labeling 
• identity- and role-based access control 
• dynamic releasability enforcement 
• automated cross-domain mediation 
• policy-driven filtering and transformation of simulation data 
• secure orchestration across multiple classification levels and coalition enclaves 

Solutions must demonstrate how the low-latency, authoritative and synchronized interactions required for JSE participation will be preserved while introducing scalable multi-level training operations supporting heterogenous user groups and mission scenarios.

Selected performers may anticipate access to JSE GRID source code for prototyping and experimentation. GRID is provided for prototyping and experimentation according to the Naval Air Warfare Center battlespace license, which must be agreed. The government intends to maintain unlimited data rights over all JSE GRID services, including those that may be developed or extended through this prototyping effort.  

Proposed solutions for this effort are expected to demonstrate solutions using GRID-enabled architectures and services. However, the department is interested in modular, standards-based solutions whose data orchestration, policy enforcement, identity management, and security concepts may be extended to broader distributed mission, training, and battle network ecosystems requiring similar data tagging, mediation, governance, and access-control capabilities.

Key differentiators for all proposals include:

• Potential to significantly advance the state of the art and technology maturity within a 1-2 year prototyping period
• Scalability to large, multi-site training environments
• Interoperability with existing DoW systems and architectures
• Alignment with government DevSecOps and secure deployment pipelines
• Ability to collaborate effectively with government teams and other industry partners
• Flexibility to evolve with emerging operational requirements and mission sets
• Information detailing prior cyber accreditation (e.g. ATO) of the proposed solution and/or a proposed plan, confidence level, and supporting evidence to achieve accreditation of the technology within a ~12-month period. Detailed information on any existing ATO, CTF, or ATC will be requested at later stages of this opportunity.

Other proposal considerations:

• Proposals should target a submission length of 5 pages for a white paper or 15 pages for a slide deck.
• Offers may only upload one submission per solution path (i.e. a maximum of 3 total submissions if offering against all three solution paths). While multiple concepts may be included under a single submission, multiple submissions for any one solution path will not be considered. 
• Offerors are encouraged to disclose and/or curb the use of AI generated proposal content. Fully AI generated submissions will be rejected.
• Prior to submitting, name your proposal “company_product name_solution path”
• For additional guidance on how to best succeed throughout this CSO, see the DIU_CSO_Amend_0001_HQ0845-20-S-C001 document published on sam.gov, or reference the CSO_Guide_1.1.2026 posted on the DIU.mil website.

Upon the successful completion of the prototype project, the competitively awarded OT may result in the award of a follow-on production contract or transaction without the use of further competitive procedures. The follow-on production OT agreement or contract will be available for use by one or more organizations in the Department of Defense and, as a result, the magnitude of the follow-on production OT agreement or contract could be significantly larger than that of the prototype OT. As such, any prototype OT will include the following statement relative to the potential for follow-on production:

“In accordance with 10 U.S.C. § 4022(f), and upon a determination that the prototype project, or portions thereof, for this transaction has been successfully completed, this competitively awarded prototype OT agreement may result in the award of a follow-on production OT agreement or contract without the use of competitive procedures.”