VJETTS Tabletop Exchange examines defense training interoperability challenges

By Cassidy Mills, Senior Staff Writer

May 29, 2026

Department of Defense (DoD) training and simulation stakeholders hosted a kickoff Tabletop Exchange under the Virtual Joint Environment for Tactical Training Systems (VJETTS) initiative on April 22 at Central Florida Tech Grove.

The event brought together defense officials, industry representatives and technical specialists to examine persistent interoperability challenges in military simulation and training systems.

The VJETTS initiative is being developed within the DoD training and simulation ecosystem and is intended to explore the creation of a shared, interoperable test range backbone for Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) environments.

The effort focuses on enabling real-time data exchange and synchronized operations across distributed systems that currently rely on multiple established communication standards.

While these standards are widely used across the defense simulation community, integration between them is often achieved through customized interfaces and system-specific adaptations rather than a common architectural layer.

The event began with morning sessions featuring government and subject matter experts outlining current interoperability constraints and operational requirements within distributed training environments.

Among the discussions was a session on future vision for an interoperable test and training environment that included remarks from Glen Harris, Branch Head at the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD).

Harris addressed challenges associated with aligning distributed simulation systems across different platforms and standards, noting that progress depends not only on technical alignment but also on improving how requirements are defined and shared across organizations developing and operating these systems.

“The challenge we face is not that these systems don’t work, but that they weren’t originally designed to work together at scale across different environments and standards,” Harris said. “What we’re trying to solve is how to maintain fidelity and operational realism while enabling true interoperability across distributed training systems.”

Across the sessions, recurring themes included the absence of a single governing interoperability layer and the continued reliance on ad hoc integration methods, where connectivity between systems is often achieved through customized interfaces, gateway solutions or project-specific engineering workarounds rather than a standardized, reusable architecture.

Following the briefings, participants transitioned into facilitated working sessions organized around layered areas of analysis. These discussions focused on how a shared operational environment might be defined, what foundational infrastructure would be required to support it and how such an environment could be scaled across broader defense training ecosystems.

Throughout the afternoon, participants consistently pointed to the difficulty of enabling existing training systems — often described as systems of excellence within individual domains — to operate together without requiring extensive redesign or replacement.

The initiative remains in an early phase, with the kickoff serving primarily as a scoping and problem-definition exercise. Discussions emphasized the need for a clearer articulation of interoperability requirements before moving toward potential implementation approaches.