The compliance testing process has been established as the means to insure DoD simulations are compliant with the HLA specifications. HLA certification testing is available through a web-based interface.

Federate HLA Compliance Testing can be conducted at http://hlatest.dod-msiac.org:8080/FTMS4. This site provides the federate developer with a simple means to ensure that a federate is compliant with the HLA standards.

The following federates have been certified as compliant:

• Compliant Federates 2006-2007
• Compliant Federates 1997-2005

The High Level Architecture (HLA) Helpdesk provides the M&S community with initial information on HLA and assistance on HLA related questions. Request for assistance can be sent to HLAHelpDesk@dod-msiac.org.

M&SCO offers a (RTI) Verification Service that tests RTIs for adherence to the HLA Interface Specification. Accordingly, M&SCO published a guide that lays out the process and organizational elements that will accomplish this verification. An RTI may be verified either to the DoD 1.3 version of the HLA specification or to the IEEE Std 1516.1-2000 HLA Federate Interface Specification. M&SCO published two interpretations documents that are intended to serve as guides to RTI developers and users when considering those portions of these Interface Specification documents that may have questionable interpretations: the DoD Interpretations document for the HLA Interface Specification, Version 1.3: Release 3 and the DoD Interpretations of the IEEE 1516-2000 series of standards, IEEE Std 1516-2000, IEEE Std 1516.1-2000, and IEEE Std 1516.2-2000.

An open industry standard for HLA is available as IEEE (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/servlet/opac?punumber=7179) Standard 1516:

• IEEE 1516-2000 - Standard for Modeling and Simulation High Level Architecture - Framework and Rules
• IEEE 1516.1-2000 - Standard for Modeling and Simulation High Level Architecture - Federate Interface Specification
• IEEE 1516.1-2000 Errata (2003-Oct-16)http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/updates/errata/1516.1-2000.pdf
• IEEE 1516.2-2000 - Standard for Modeling and Simulation High Level Architecture - Object Model Template (OMT) Specification
• IEEE 1516.3-2003 - Recommended Practice for High Level Architecture Federation Development and Execution Process (FEDEP)
• IEEE 1516.4-2007 - Recommended Practice for Verification, Validation, and Accreditation of a Federation an Overlay to the High Level Architecture Federation Development and Execution Process

Copies of the DoD HLA 1.3 specifications are available upon request.

HLA is the subject of the NATO standardization agreement (STANAG 4603) for modeling and simulation: "Modelling and Simulation Architecture Standards for Technical Interoperability: High Level Architecture (HLA)."