SBIR-STTR Award

NSTAR-X; N-STAR Discretionary Phase II
Award last edited on: 2/3/2023

Sponsored Program
SBIR
Awarding Agency
DOD : Navy
Total Award Amount
$1,849,402
Award Phase
2
Solicitation Topic Code
N193-A03
Principal Investigator
Jason Mendez

Company Information

Aviation Systems Engineering Company Inc (AKA: ASEC)

21801 North Shangri-La Drive Suite F
Lexington Park, MD 20653
   (301) 862-1732
   N/A
   www.asec-incorporated.com
Location: Single
Congr. District: 05
County: St. Mary's

Phase I

Contract Number: N68335-20-F-0092
Start Date: 11/21/2019    Completed: 3/20/2020
Phase I year
2020
Phase I Amount
$149,999
As Navy training requirements progress towards a live, virtual, constructive (LVC) training solution, it will become increasingly important to improve responsiveness and standardize the after-action review (AAR) process across the fleet. Rising training costs, advances in networked warfare, and operational security (OPSEC) concerns require the interoperability of disparate warfare systems. This diverse demand is currently addressed with a variety of training systems from different manufacturers with different objectives and AAR tools. These tools can be time consuming and have peculiar design and integration issues which hinders fleet AAR standardization. The technical approach offered by Aviation Systems Engineering Company, Inc. (ASEC) and our partners Aptima Inc. and Arorae Corp. (ARO) will address this need by researching and creating the Phase I prototype of N-STAR: Navy Standardized After-action Review. N-STAR is a system agnostic, instructor-focused AAR tool that synchronizes distributed notes from the top down achieving standardization in accordance with the Universal Joint Task List (UJTL). This solution design will consider the needs to integrate and be used in the shipboard, aircraft, and submarine live or synthetic training environments providing a near real-time AAR for live and synthetic training events, while maintaining interoperability with the various after-action tools currently in use.

Benefit:
Direct benefits of N-STAR are that it increases AAR responsiveness and standardization of single and multi-unit training events in an LVC environment. Future benefits lie in the proposed nature of its design and architecture which will support big-data analytics allowing for trend analysis and recommendations for follow-on LVC events. N-STAR has the potential for use throughout commercial, federal and defense markets. The advantages gained from N-STAR will benefit any distributed training program, where near real-time review aligned with strategic, operational and tactical objectives are vital to enhancing lessons learned and driving improvement during follow on training events. This requirement is seen throughout the DoD training programs of other services, and civilian first responders.

Keywords:
Near Real-Time, Near Real-Time, Integration, Live virtual and constructive (LVC), Training, Networked warfare, After-action reviews (AAR), standardization, synthetic

Phase II

Contract Number: N68335-21-C-0010
Start Date: 2/18/2021    Completed: 8/24/2022
Phase II year
2021
Phase II Amount
$1,699,403
The standardization framework in the Navy - Standardized After-action Review (N-STAR) Phase I project focused on Navy Tactical Tasks (NTAs) and Navy Mission Essential Tasks (NMETs). The project team developed a use case focused on an unclassified multi-platform coordinated anti-submarine warfare exercise (ASWEX) in a Fleet Synthetic Training environment (e.g. FST-ASW), in order to facilitate identification of NTAs for individual units conducting coordinated operations in a primary mission area. This use case situated N-STAR to be an integrated application-based utility that collects performance data used for rapid post exercise after-action review generation. The proposed Phase II, Navy Standardized After-action Review Framework Integration (NSTAR-X), would build off this framework and process to implement the qualitative and quantitative measures into designated Navy-supported after-action review capabilities.

Benefit:
This proposal will expand work currently being done for PMA-205 in the air defense mission set for both NGTS ART and JAAR, and would include metrics and after-action review (AAR) capabilities to support integrated Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) training exercises. Fleet users and support staff will also be able to access contributions via JAAR (N72 Training Plans/Resources, US Fleet Forces) and NGTS ART (PMA-205 and OPNAV N98).

Keywords:
NMET, NGTS, NTA, After-action reviews (AAR), LVC, JAAR, Training