scope:

This document provides an overview of the High Level Architecture (HLA), defines a family of related HLA documents, and defines the principles of HLA in terms of responsibilities that federates (simulations, supporting utilities, or interfaces to live systems) and federations (sets of federates working together) must uphold.

Purpose

This document describes the general principles defining the HLA and delineates the set of rules that apply to HLA federations and federates. Each rule is then described, and the rationale for its inclusion is provided.

Many different classes of simulations exist. Each class has changing application characteristics and needs to be flexibly supported to allow for interoperability and reuse across classes and to limit the need to maintain multiple interoperability approaches. The HLA is a common integrated architecture, which has been developed to provide a flexible approach for addressing these interoperability and reuse needs. The related standards need to be considered as a set of products because changes in one are likely to have an impact on the others.