Ovzon in successful demonstration with the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV)

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  5 août 2019 | International, Naval

  Land Systems Integration Team Is Leader in Model-Based Systems Engineering

  By C. Michaela Judge, Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic Public Affairs CHARLESTON, S.C. (NNS) -- The Land Systems Integration (LSI) Division at Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Atlantic continues to be an enterprise leader in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) for their work on land systems modernization and integration. MBSE is an engineering approach that utilizes a common, digital tool suite allowing all team members – from engineer to sponsor – to have awareness, line-of-sight and an understanding of the interaction between the various moving parts across the systems engineering and project lifecycle. LSI's Vehicular Technology Transition (VTT) team incorporates the full range of MBSE techniques into their systems engineering projects to support the Marine Corps and has had great success in continuing this approach in their daily work. “What makes LSI and our team specifically successful is the depth of knowledge in implementation of using the MBSE Tool Suite,” said Tim Turner, VTT team lead. “Our engineering work isn't radically different than any other engineering groups across the Command; it's how we're putting the data in the system and making it transparent to everyone that needs to have access to it.” Though engineers have been performing systems engineering in some capacity for decades, using this model-based approach provides an added advantage to deliver effective and timely solutions to the warfighter. “Our MBSE Tool Suite is a set of seamlessly integrated engineering lifecycle management tools that work together as one,” said Jacob Witmer, VTT team Military GPS User Equipment (MGUE) project lead. “We use these tools to manage requirements and architectures, plan projects, track changes, manage quality, and provide an enterprise library management system where you catalog, organize, use, reuse, manage, and report on any type of software, technology, or business asset.” In the vehicle transition domain, the VTT team utilized MBSE techniques to solve real-world challenges for the warfighter. Most recently, they used MBSE to conduct global positioning system (GPS) integration work conducted on the Joint-Light Tactical Vehicle, the MGUE Program's lead platform. “When we look at all of the people our team has to work with on this integration project, we have to manage a lot of different data, to include where the trucks are manufactured, where GPS is managed, the performance level of the GPS card, the truck integration and more,” said Witmer. “There are a lot of players, managing a lot of data in a lot of different formats from different geographic parts of the country. That's really what the MBSE Tool Suite is designed to do – manage, connect and link the data to see how they impact each other.” One cost-avoidance benefit of using the MBSE Tool Suite, in time and man-hours, includes the ability to quickly build reports. “We can build 150-page project requirements documents in three minutes because the data is already in the Tool Suite,” said Ryan Longshore, VTT team technical lead. “There is an investment in time and energy upfront in loading the data, but a report that would take 30 to 90 days is done in a matter of minutes and everything from that project is captured in the report.” The team's use of MBSE is not only essential to connecting and maintaining data across a project, but also a necessary resource in developing physical models and solutions in a fraction of the time previously needed to fulfill a warfighter requirement. “Our team works within the Systems Integration Laboratory (SIL) to design and test on multiple vehicular platforms,” said Turner. “The lab allows us to execute MBSE across all team functions, from mission thread to risk analysis or program management.” The team maintains physical models for all of the vehicle platforms they support. When a requirement from a sponsor arrives, the team can use tools within the SIL to design and print a three-dimensional piece of hardware and test it on an existing model before they touch a physical vehicle. The team conducts engineering, mechanical and software-related integration testing and design work all within the laboratory. “It's all about testing upfront, learning upfront, failing faster and learning from it and moving on and improving on the design,” said Turner. As the team designs and tests within the lab, they also update the MBSE Tool Suite is to capture lessons learned, integration challenges and real-time project data for all team members to access. “The beauty of the suite being so integrated is that it doesn't matter what type of systems engineering methodology a project uses, the tools can be tailored to meet a myriad of engineering processes and organizing the data by methodology saves countless hours in digging around trying to find historical artifacts,” said Witmer. The team can now complete an integration project that previously took 18 to 36 months as quickly as six to nine months, without sacrificing quality, thanks to the value of MBSE. With VTT and other teams reaping the benefits of MBSE, NIWC Atlantic created a training and workforce development path to work toward a Command-wide adoption of this method. Communities of interest, industry engagements and training events on MBSE methods are a few of the efforts implemented to date. The VTT uses these training approaches, to a smaller-scale, to continue to encourage MBSE implementation and help employees understand the power of using a model-based approach to apply agility in executing warfighter solutions. “We're seeing the benefits and through MBSE my team has the flexibility to fail fast and learn a lot upfront,” said Turner. The team's success with the MBSE Tool Suite is a Command-wide example of how the transparency and connectivity of engineering data help to provide integration solutions to NIWC Atlantic customers with a high confidence of success. As a part of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, NIWC Atlantic provides systems engineering and acquisition to deliver information warfare capabilities to the naval, joint and national warfighter through the acquisition, development, integration, production, test, deployment, and sustainment of interoperable command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, cyber and information technology capabilities. https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=110447

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  11 février 2021 | International, C4ISR

  Urgently needed: Tech-savvy defense leaders

  By: Nate Ashton Defense priorities are shifting toward emerging technologies at an unprecedented pace, but still not fast enough to keep America ahead of potential adversaries. We need to hit the accelerator by drastically increasing the tech savviness of defense leaders. The defense establishment is better at this than it used to be. We've seen a rapid expansion of new authorities and programs to drive tech innovation since Pentagon leaders started talking about the “third offset” in 2014. The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act continues that trend, establishing a national cyber director position, elevating the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, and calling for open-systems architecture and API usage in some key programs. But we will not keep our current military superiority through these kinds of incremental changes alone. We need a radical shift in how the Department of Defense does business. Any organizational transformation starts with the right leadership. This is doubly true in government, where the bureaucracy is built to maintain the status quo and avoid risk to guarantee continuity of operations and effective stewardship of taxpayer dollars. But understanding where risk and opportunity lies — in areas from cybersecurity to agile procurement — is now much more important than knowing how to manage a major, multibillion-dollar weapons system procurement. The Biden administration and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin should start by filling key acquisitions and management roles with leaders who have experience in the tech or venture sector, or have a record of disruptive innovation within the DoD itself. These people must bring both an understanding of the current tech landscape and a willingness to back the innovators under them. Without a clear, top-down mandate to disrupt the status quo, nothing will change. The new administration should also make it a priority to heed the advice of defense and technology advisory boards. Oftentimes leaders who have spent their careers in tech, venture, and private research and development may be unsuited for full-time government positions, yet bring invaluable perspective and expertise. The Biden administration should continue and accelerate the work already being done to implement the Defense Innovation Board's recommendations for training and software acquisition and the Cyberspace Solarium Commission's recommendations for security. More than identifying useful, new technologies, defense leaders must transform culture and skills at all levels of the DoD to operationalize tech innovation. The hardest part of driving change in a big organization is not recognizing the end goal nor setting policies to get there, but rather operationalizing it at all levels across the millions of active-duty, civilian and contractor personnel doing the day-to-day work. This will take massive investments in training the existing workforce, strengthening the pathways between defense and the national tech and venture ecosystems, and changing processes to enable and incentivize new ways of doing business. The DoD needs to make aggressive investments in the near term. In the near term, defense leaders should: Train all DoD personnel on emerging technology. The need for these types of knowledge across the DoD simply can't be met by existing resources, which is why Dcode has worked with the Defense Acquisition University, AFWERX and others to equip defense leaders to innovate like a startup, evaluate tech like an investor and understand the emerging tech landscape. Provide advanced training and specialization on commercial tech procurement and software procurement for contracting and information security personnel. Today's purchases are best-value decisions that require true subject matter expertise to scope problem sets, assess the best solutions and bring those solutions in. In contracting, the practice of rating bids based on meeting rigid requirements and competing on price alone simply does not work. In security, moving from compliance-based to risk-based approaches will require a massive influx of technical talent and training. Expand, promote and incentivize industry exchange programs both ways: pulling in private sector talent, and sending the DoD's talent on loan to the tech and venture industry. Fund and empower tech innovation hubs. Some of the biggest successes in recent years have come from newer innovation hubs and centers of excellence that are proliferating across agencies and programs. Efforts like these should be encouraged to both replicate best practices from existing hubs that have seen success, seeded with funding to try new things, and matured into programs of record as their business model proves out. One need only look at the significant measurable outcomes that the Defense Innovation Unit and AFWERX have driven in recent years, with a relatively minimal amount of resources, to see that they are only just beginning to scratch the surface. Driving internal disruption at scale will take an exponential increase in the number of people and amount of funding. The future of defense innovation is bright, and the community of passionate leaders inside and outside of the government working to move things forward is incredibly inspiring. I'm hopeful the Biden administration and new Congress will see 2021 as the year to make ambitious investments for the future. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/02/10/urgently-needed-tech-savvy-defense-leaders/

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  20 août 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Here are the intelligence community’s top 6 priorities

  By: Mark Pomerleau For the first time in recent history, the intelligence community has established a common vision with common operating principles that reaches all of its disparate agencies. “The leaders of the intelligence community about a year ago got together and we – for the first time I can recall – got together and established a common vision for ourselves called IC 2025,” Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of national intelligence, said Aug. 15 at the DoDIIS conference in Omaha, Nebraska. The vision, she said, explains what the community needs to fulfill the IC's mission and how the community must work together. Gordon had previously discussed these priorities during a presentation at the GEOINT symposium in April. The priorities include: ♦ Relying on Automated Intelligence using Machines, or AIM. The IC is establishing an AIM center – in concert with the Department of Defense's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center – to help the community harness the power of technology. Gordon said she prefers the “AIM” lexicon because she is interested in outcomes, not technology. One such outcome is the commitment that no U.S. or allied service member will ever be at a disadvantage on the battlefield because and adversary can make better use of data, she said in Omaha. ♦ Developing the right workforce. Gordon said in April that if the intel community is going to harness the power of machines to use more of the data productively, then they have to invest more in humans. ♦ Developing a comprehensive cyber strategy. Cyber is not a thing, it is a vehicle by which so many imperatives are addressed, Gordon said in April, adding that it includes cyber protection. “If you hear about it in public it's who's in charge. I think that is a total misnomer,” she said. “We really have to address the cyber attack and the cyber posturing that is happening to us every day and help this administration figure out the response we need.” ♦ Creating a modern data management infrastructure. Pursing data without a purpose, Gordon said at the GEOINT symposium, is probably not going to get the community there but not understanding that data management is the key to any of the elements of success they portend will not put efforts in the right area. ♦ Increasing and leveraging partnerships with the private sector. This is an area most all leaders in the defense and intelligence space acknowledge is necessary for success. ♦ Improving acquisition agility. Part of this comes from security clearance reform, she said in April, describing security clearance reform at DoDIIS as one of the existential threats within the IC. Full article: https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/dodiis/2018/08/17/here-are-the-intelligence-communitys-top-6-priorities