Janus is named for the opposite-looking, two-faced Roman god who was the guardian of the gates of Rome and the patron of the world's past and future by being able to look in two directions at the same time. Janus is primarily categorized as a platoon-to-brigade level, ground and air-ground combat simulation using conventional and chemical weapon systems. It can simulate the operational functionality of all types of direct fire, crew-served, ground weapon systems, dismounted infantry, artillery systems, fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft systems, and combat service support systems. The interactions of these systems with each other, as well as the impact of the battlefield environment (i.e., weather, time of day, obscuration, and terrain features) on acquisition and engagement, are represented at a high level of fidelity in Janus. Currently, Janus is used extensively for military training, combat development and analysis, and operational test and exercise driving applications.

Janus is an interactive, six-sided, closed, stochastic, ground combat simulation featuring high-resolution color graphics. "Interactive" refers to the actual, real-time interplay between the personnel who perform the command decisions and the simulated units and systems they control. It is "six-sided" because up to six friendly and/or enemy forces can be represented. (Note: DIS supports only four [4] sides: "friendly", "enemy", "neutral", and "other".) For large scenarios, three (3) sides can be used: Side 1 - Blue, Side 2 - Red, and Side 3 - Red Wraparound. "Closed," means the sides or forces in a scenario do not, in general, have perfect knowledge of other sides or forces. "Stochastic" refers to the way the model assesses, according to the laws of probability and chance, the outcomes of those battlefield phenomena that cannot be predetermined.

"Ground combat" means the focus of the simulation is on the deployment of ground combat systems and how each interacts and is impacted by combat support and combat service support systems, terrain, weather, battlefield obscuration, day and night, and a chemical environment. Janus is designed primarily to allow a user to model military conflicts of opposing forces up to the brigade level. The forces are simultaneously directed and controlled by a set of players or gamers for each side who only have knowledge of enemy units that are in direct observation by one or more of their subordinate units. Additional intelligence from other sources may be available if the appropriate C3 nets are represented. Janus is played on a computer- generated digitized terrain map that is displayed via color graphics monitors to include representations of terrain features such as elevation (i.e., contour lines), roads, rivers, vegetation, buildings, fences, pipelines, power lines, railroad tracks, beams, and swamps.

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