Called the National Cyber Range, the computer network mimics the architecture of the Internet so military planners can see the effects of by acting out attack and defense scenarios, Reuters says.

Planning for the Cyber Range was carried out by Lockheed Martin, which won a $30.8 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant, and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which won $24.7 million.

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The description of the range as issued by DARPA calls for a flexible test bed that can mimic government, military and commercial networks as well as "human behavior and frailties." The human behavior simulation has to be able to respond as a person would under defense readiness condition (DefCon) and information operations condition (InfoCon) as well as carry out execution of war plans.

Cyber Range plans call for the ability to simulate offensive and defensive measures of the caliber that nations might be able to carry out. DARPA wants the range to support multiple tests and scenarios at the same time and to ensure that they don't interfere with each other. "The Range must be capable of operating from Unclassified to Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information/Special Access Program with multiple simultaneous tests operating at different levels and compartments," according to DARPA's announcement of the project.