Contract Award: Adapx to support DARPA's Deep Green Program

News Report

Here in this blog we have already reported that on last October Adapx was awarded a contract by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's Simulation and Training Technology Center (STTC) to build advanced speech and sketch interfaces for course-of-action simulators. Adapx's solution, named Capturx, provides natural interfaces which enable commanders of small units to model outcomes faster and improve decision making without the distractions and data-capture obstacles of today’s complex C2 and C4ISR interfaces.

A recent entry on Digital Battlespace illustrates how such technology is going to be applied in the context of DARPA's Deep Green Program.

The Program

The mission of the Deep Green Program is to enable commanders to use simulation to foresee the outcomes of plans and make necessary adjustments. The program is developing a synergistic human/machine system, which includes establishing natural warfighter-computer interfaces, creating a common futures graph, and building a synthetic battlespace engine that will understand inputs and employ reasoning to predict multiple battlefield outcomes. Instead of having a planning phase followed by an execution phase, Deep Green will execute both phases simultaneously. The idea is to allow commanders to think creatively about the options available to accomplish a mission. The software-based system then takes these alternatives and analyzes how they might play out to help commanders stay within an enemy’s decision cycle. The technology will allow commanders to generate options rapidly and proactively to avoid any surprises. “The assertion behind Deep Green is we should be surprised much less frequently,” said Deep Green's Program Manager Col. John Surdu.

Deep Green is divided into several components or applications:

• Commander’s Associate, i.e. the primary interface between human users and Deep Green. Its interface allows users to draw freehand on it and to speak instructions to generate options. In the future, it will be able to infer or deduce commanders’ intents from their sketches and speech. The goal is for officers to draw a course of action on a monitor the way they would on a piece of paper and to have the computer understand the drawings and generate futures. The Commander’s Associate also will be able to prompt commanders at times when they need to generate options.
• Blitzkrieg, which takes the options generated for friendly, allied and neutral forces and models possible futures.
• Crystal Ball, which basically controls how Blitzkrieg generates rules, and it monitors data from an ongoing operation and updates the likelihood metrics associated with possible futures.

The Context

The previous two phases of the programme saw the development of the voice and written symbology, also provided by Adapx. The recent contract aims to integrate Capturx into battle command systems, enabling commanders to create their own battle plans by ‘simply speaking and sketching their plans using standard military jargon or symbols’.

Designed to be ‘faster for decisions and deployment’, Capturx was developed to make battle command easier for soldiers and commanders in an effort to reduce data entry obstacles: ‘You made a decision five minutes ago, and in ten minutes it could be wrong’, a company spokesman added.

Describing itself as a ‘global expert for speech and sketch’, Adapx claims to provide easier interfaces which require less training, and avoid the ‘clunky interface’ commonplace in legacy systems. The company also provides a pen and paper option using special pens for those who use hard copy for mission planning.

As already stated, this news follows the contract award to the company in October from the U.S Army Research Laboratory’s Simulation and Training Technology Center, which aims to ‘streamline course-of–action simulations’ for small unit commanders, which allow them to predict potential courses of action.

References: Digital Battlespace (1), Capturx (2), AFCEA (3)

U.S. Navy demonstrates UAV to Weapons interoperability through a Service Oriented Architecture

News Report

As reported by U.S. Naval Air System Command's website, the U.S. Navy recently completed a demonstration for its unmanned aircraft Common Control System (CCS) at Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division in China Lake, Calif. During the demonstration, operators used the CCS to control a simulated unmanned aircraft system (UAS) and associated sensors tasked by Special Operations Forces. The UAS identified and tracked a hostile moving target and sent images of the target to an air controller. The UAS data created a precise coordinate so that a Net-Enabled Weapon (NEW) could strike. The UAS and NEW controller were then used together to perform a battle damage assessment.

The Technology

Led by the Program Executive Office for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons, CCS is a software-only solution with instantiations for fixed, mobile and dismounted hardware configurations. It is intended to address common requirements for current and future unmanned aircraft systems.

During the demonstration, the U.S. Navy’s CCS used a sample of services developed under the Office of Secretary of Defense’s UAS Control Segment architecture. Multiple vendors developed these sample services and the user interface, which were successfully integrated to provide modular capabilities within one software system. Some of the services used were:

• Blue Force Tracker
• Cursor on Target
• Sensor Product Archive
• Sensor Command and Control
• Vehicle Flight Status
• Video Stream Catalog
• Meteorological and Oceanographic weather service.

Government-developed Standardization Agreement (STANAG) 4586 service and electro-optical/infrared sensor model services, as well as an independently developed industry presentation layer, were also used in the demonstration.

 

The Context

A major objective of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps is to make avionics and sensor systems lighter and smaller for the functionality required and to have a greater degree of component commonality with other, especially commercial, systems. The U.S. Department is moving away from federated avionics systems to distributed systems where common processor modules and shared apertures can be used with great cost and support advantage.

Researchers at the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NavAir), since a few years started surveying industry for companies able to design and build a common control station for all unmanned vehicles operating on the ground, at sea, and in the air. An official request for information was issued on September 2010 to learn more about industry research, technologies, and existing programs that could support several different unmanned systems.

Comments

“The demonstration verified that service-oriented techniques can help create a set of reusable, independently developed, software services for control of unmanned systems,” said Mike Paul, the Navy’s CCS program manager. “The flexibility of the CCS framework and the government led integration efforts allows the system to efficiently address similar requirements for unmanned vehicles, yet meet the unique requirements of each vehicle in a highly efficient manner.”

“The CCS approach leverages off of the investments and capabilities that exist today to smartly embrace a modular, scalable open architecture for unmanned systems,” said Rear Adm. Bill Shannon, PEO (U&W) program executive officer.

Futher Reading

• UAS Control Segment Architecture (web link)

 

References: Navair (1), GlobalSecurity (2), Auvac (3)

UK MoD's Information Superiority Experimentation Laboratory

Picture: Crown Copyright/Dstl 2011

News Report

A recent news article on the UK MOD website illustrates the activities that are performed in the Information Superiority Experimentation Laboratory (ISEL) in support of UK Defence Operations.

The ISEL, functional since June 2010, is located at the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) at Porton Down in Wiltshire, and employs UK MOD scientists who support operations. The commercially neutral, Government-owned and operated building, where ISEL is situated, provides users from Government, the Armed Forces, industry and academia with a comprehensive support package that includes: secure and flexible laboratory space in ten reconfigurable laboratories, links to secure national and international network links, and access to subject matter experts from across Dstl, including military personnel.
Although the primary focus for ISEL is C4ISTAR experimentation, the facility contributes to a range of related activities, from military training to equipment capability demonstration.

The Technology (VBS2)

Work facilitated by the laboratory includes the use of an adapted commercially available computer game to provide military training. Virtual Battlespace 2 (VBS2), modified from the existing game 'Armoured Assault' by Bohemia Interactive, is now used across the MOD to provide pre-deployment training and the ability to practise drills anywhere - significantly reducing transportation and facility costs.

"These pieces of software have provided real benefit to armed forces during pre-deployment training," said Dstl military adviser Commander Mike Toft, "I have spoken to commanding officers who have told me that the repeated drilling of troops in the correct procedures using VBS2 means that, when faced with real situations in-theatre, they are far more effective; and this has saved lives."

VBS2 is a commercial-off-the-shelf, game-based training platform, incorporating a high-fidelity virtual environment, scenario and mission editors, AAR and a powerful development suite. Soldiers move in a shared, immersive, firstperson environment that supports mounted and dismounted operations. The system provides ground and air vehicles, small arms and vehiclemounted weapons, communications, and interactive opposing forces of the contemporary operational environment, including improvised explosive devices. Warfighters learn to anticipate and respond to tactical situations by practicing existing and developing tactics, techniques and procedures. Trainers and leaders use VBS2 to rehearse tactical missions and conduct AARs of training sessions using easy-to-use authoring tools integrated in the simulation.

The Technology (CFBLNet)

Dstl manages connectivity into and out from the ISEL site, and facilitates the creation of secure collaborative working environments across the UK and internationally. The Combined Federated BattleLabs Network (CFBLNet) allows those operating at ISEL to connect with sites in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and America simultaneously, reducing the need for international travel, along with the associated costs and carbon emissions.

The CFBLNet is a laboratory environment which utilizes a distributed Wide Area Network as the vehicle to experiment with new capabilities by conducting Research and Development, Trials and Assessment (RDT&A) initiatives. The CFBLNet consists of a distributed and integrated network architecture of Combined, Joint, and Military Service infrastructure components (networks, database servers, application servers, client workstations, etc.). These strings of network equipment and services are located within the confines of the various national and international battle laboratories and experimentation sites of the participants, which provide the applications, analytic tools, and communications necessary to conduct initiatives or experiments.

The CFBLNet grew out the network designed to support the U.S. Joint Warfighter Interoperability Demonstrations (JWID), which used to build a support network for the period of the demonstrations and tear it down each year after the demonstrations. In 1999, the Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (JWID) exercise used, for the first time, a permanent infrastructure that became what is now called the CFBLNet, as established by the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Board in 2001.

Further Reading:

• VBS2 White Paper (pdf)

References: UK MoD (1), US Army (2), CFBLNet (3)