In order to solve the problem of high cost and high risk in UAV cooperative experiment, a distributed UAV cooperative target tracking simulation system based on high level architecture (HLA) is designed. According to the composition and technical characteristics of HLA distributed simulation, the organizational structure of simulation federation and the model synchronization among simulation members are constructed. In the design process of HLA UAV simulation system, 2 key technologies of data interaction and model synchronization are analyzed and verified by simulation experiments. The simulation results show that the system reduces the complexity of programming design, improves the synchronization performance, and has a certain practical value.