SBIR-STTR Award

Recent combat operations have not required significant traditional Electronic Warfare (EW) operations. This, coupled with the rapidly developing capabilities of some advanced threats, could leave our forces with atrophied EW skills - underprepared to achieve our national objectives. A quick review of many of our nation’s contingency operational plans demonstrates Electronic Warfare will be a critical aspect of potential future conflicts. EW training is crucial to military operations and the EW debrief is one of the most effective means to evaluate the effectiveness of our training. Current EW debrief tools often fall short in accuracy, completeness, applicability and most importantly, availability. While there are opportunities to asses actual employment results, much of the EW assessment from an exercise is a mix of data analysis and conjecture. Modeling and simulation offers a much more quantitative assessment of EW employment. This research will provide a systematic approach to answering a wide array of questions about EW effects while capitalizing on the valuable lessons learned and retaining known mechanisms from familiar and proven EW assessments. This research will evaluate data collection, analysis, and presentation methods to develop next generation capabilities to further EW expertise.

Benefit:
The pervasive need for effective EW debrief and after-action review tools has persistently existed throughout the DoD for many years. This research will provide a blueprint for advanced EW After Action Review which will offer the warfighter an unprecedented debrief capability that spans the realm of simulated to live EW employment. Throughout the world, where our forces do not have the opportunity to effectively evaluate EW training against advanced threat systems, this research will provide invaluable insight to develop capabilities to overcome shortfalls EW training. The results of this research will be applicable anywhere EW instruction takes place, whether in the U.S., Asia or Europe.

Keywords:
Electronic Warfare, Debrief, After-Action Review, Simulation And Training, Ew Assessment, Evaluation, Electronic Attack, Electronic Protect

Electronic Warfare (EW) will be a critical aspect of potential future conflicts. After years of facing threats without significant EW threats, many EW operators are left with atrophied skills. This lack of real-world experience, combined with the rapid pace at which new threat technology is developed, makes EW training crucial to military operations, and the EW debrief is one of the most effective means to evaluate the effectiveness of our training. The objective of this proposal is to demonstrate a cost effective, but high fidelity, solution to add a simulation environment that can consume EW data sources, assess an output, and then record, display and potentially communicate a more combat realistic environment to airborne operators, range control personnel and EW threat operators, while at the same time recording the info for immediate After Action Review (AAR). If this EW/AAR Phase II is successful, it will open the door to providing more realistic and higher fidelity EW training and debriefing, while also providing a more cost effective and extensible way to create the combat environments our military will potentially face in the future.

Benefit:
In Phase II, BSI believes this is a unique and innovative approach to improving the realism and cost effectiveness of Live-Virtual-Constructive EW training and debrief that could be applied at many ranges and simulations across the DoD. In the course of our research we have identified more applications for improvement in EW/AAR and expanded and targeted our objectives for future EW/AAR development. The results of our Phase I research has created a road-map for the implementation of advanced jamming technique simulation, visualization tools and gives insight into the vast possibilities of advancing EW/AAR if an EW simulation environment could interact with live ground and air systems. The market for distributed military simulation is vast and increasing as more and more training moves into the simulated realm, due to the cost of live training and the pressure to reduce the number of live training ranges. Many hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on DIS-capable simulations, including weapon system trainers, full-motion trainers, image generators, and a wide variety of SAFs. In short, the market is many orders of magnitude larger than required for BSI to thrive with just a small market share. The first product that will incorporate the Live Range Plugin (LRP) Phase II capabilities is BSI's Modern Air Combat Environment (MACE). MACE is BSI?s flagship product, a DIS-based entity generator and threat environment. Within six months of the initial release of MACE in April of 2011, MACE had been sold to USAF, ANG, USAFE and USSOCOM units, educational institutions and to companies in the private sector. MACE is also registered with the Department of Defense Trade Controls and ready for international sales.

Keywords:
Dis, Semi-Automated Forces, Simulation, Electronic Warfare, After Action Review, Threat Environment, Live-Virtual-Constructive, Extensible