How Real Is Real Enough? A Decade of Lessons from GHOSTS

The Department of War is increasingly using digital twins and digital engineering to support training, testing, cybersecurity, mission rehearsal, and AI-enabled analysis. But building a useful digital representation raises a fundamental question: How much of the real system needs to be reproduced for an effective simulation? In this webcast, we draw on a decade of developing and deploying GHOSTS to examine how engineers can determine the level of realism needed to meet objectives and use that determination to decide what must be modeled—including networks, users, organizations, adversaries, and autonomous agents—and what can safely be left out.

Attendees will learn

• how GHOSTS evolved over a decade of cyber exercises, experimentation, and operational use.
• why more simulation detail does not automatically produce more useful or realistic results.
• how GHOSTS models interactions between people, organizations, information, cyber systems, and increasingly autonomous agents.