High Performance Computing (HPC) is a key, enabling technology that is essential to assure that U.S. Forces maintain dominance on the battlefield with minimal risk to life, even against numerically superior forces. Tracing requirements from the President's National Security Strategy to our National Military Strategy as defined by the Military Services, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the warfighting Commanders in Chief (ClNCs), one common denominator prevails-the need for militarily superior technology. Technology is a key discriminator in our deterrence of conflicts; failing to deter aggression, technology can be the difference between success and failure on the battlefield. HPC enables advanced modeling and simulation concepts and capabilities that can be used to assess the value of individual components or new weapon systems' projected performance levels. Data collected from modeling and simulation will assist milestone decisions by pointing to research, development, test and evaluation (RDT & E) of most value to the warfighter. Through the use of HPC resources for example, it is possible to simulate the capabilities of a new weapon system and to measure that system's impact on existing tactics and the predicted outcome of a military engagement (using tens of thousands of entity types). As a result, senior DoD leadership will have data to assist in the decision-making process as early as possible. These data will provide information about whether to proceed, modify, or cancel a program and where to best invest our RDT & E resources. Other mission-critical areas that could be greatly improved by advanced modeling and simulations using HPC include ocean modeling and weather prediction, bomb damage assessment, water tampering determinations, modeling of radio frequency systems and antenna designs, environmental impacts/ cleanup, and counter-proliferation and counter-terrorism scenarios.

This publication contains 105 Department of Defense research mission success stories enabled by high performance computing. The work was supported by 22 DoD laboratories and sponsors and represents 9 computational technology areas. Most of the enabling HPC was provided by DoD's HPC Modernization Program using Major Shared Resources Centers and Distributed Centers. The success stories were chosen to illustrate the crucial role of HPC in basic and applied research at both DoD laboratories and supporting academic and contractor participants.

High performance computing (HPC) has historically played a major role in the ability of the United States to develop and deploy superior weapons, warfighting capabilities, and mission support systems. Under the auspices of the Director, Defense Research and Engineering (DDR & E), the Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) is the focused modernization effort within the DoD to acquire, manage, and sustain modern HPC resources in support of defense science and technology, and developmental test and evaluation. The HPCMP is rapidly evolving past its initial program development and procurement start up phase and is increasing focus on application of HPC technology and resources to priority defense requirements. This plan describes some of the accomplishments achieved by the program in Fiscal Year (FY) 1997 and outlines the major strategies and milestones we expect to achieve over the next two years. The overriding goal of the program is to exploit HPC technology for military advantage across battlespace. The strategy to achieve this goal is to acquire and sustain world class high performance computing and network capabilities for use by defense scientists and engineers.