GAMMA is used to support NATO’s Guidance for Operational Planning, requiring the analysis of scenarios characterised by:

• Strong interdependencies between military and non-military issues.
• Low intensity conflict.
• Multi-faction conflicts.
• Operations other than war (OOTW).
• Political constraints on military operations.

The GAMMA architecture is based on the Microsoft Common Object Model (COM) which allows a “plug-and-play” approach to modelling with specific components being included in the model as required for the scenario being investigated. This approach describes all simulation objects such as military and non-military units in very general terms, so that new types of objects can be defined and modelled easily without software changes.

GAMMA models any number of factions, which may be grouped into any number of coalitions, the mutual relationships being defined on a continuous scale.

The core GAMMA engine is an event driven simulation model, which can be run both in an interactive (wargaming) or a closed (simulation) mode. In the closed mode, conditional orders can be given to each object to allow units to be “programmed” to respond in different ways to different situations.

Units within factions can behave semi-autonomously and operate as agents. In addition to military entities, these units can be used to represent civilian population or terrorist groups. An agent’s actions depend on the following factors:

• their intentions.
• the environment.
• past actions.

To allow detailed mission analysis GAMMA provides graphic features to support quick interpretation of situations including threat pattern/weighting and display of recorded model statistics.