RTC Senior Experimental Developer named NDIA Tester of the Year

By Christy BarnettAugust 12, 2021

RTC Senior Experimental Developer named NDIA Tester of the Year
Dr. Kenneth LeSueur, the senior technologist in the Modeling and Simulation Division at the U.S. Army Redstone Test Center (RTC), is the winner of the 2020 National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) Army Government Civilian Tester of the Year Award. (Photo Credit: Christy Barnett, RTC Public Affairs) VIEW ORIGINAL

REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. (August 11, 2021) – Dr. Kenneth LeSueur, the senior experimental developer in the Modeling and Simulation Division at the U.S. Army Redstone Test Center (RTC), is the winner of the 2020 National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) Army Government Civilian Tester of the Year Award.

In 2020, LeSueur served as the Integration Lead for the Combat Aviation Brigade Architecture Integration Laboratory (CABAIL) for Program Executive Office, Aviation (PEO Aviation). His leadership resulted in the creation of a first-of-its-kind CAB-level, persistent, and operationally realistic environment that utilizes Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) simulation and stimulation of systems under test (SUT).

LeSueur integrated six individual System Integration Labs together, led or participated in four working groups critical to CABAIL success, and provided the Modeling and Simulation (M&S) backbone to fully immerse SUTs in an operationally realistic environment.

His work and research have been concentrated in Hardware-in-the-Loop (HWIL) testing, distributed testing, M&S, and high performance computing.

He has served the U.S. Army as a member of the test and evaluation community since 1986, when he started as an intern at the Laser & Optical Test Branch of the U.S. Army Missile Command Test and Evaluation Directorate.

Thirty-five years later he is the senior RTC experimental developer, charged with creating and fostering the promulgation of ingenious methods to create operationally realistic environments that utilize LVC entities to fully exercise components, systems, and systems of systems. In his experimental developer role, LeSueur is the RTC/U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) lead for Distributed Testing, Cross Domain Solutions (CDS), and Tactical Network Simulations. In this capacity, LeSueur is required to lead or interface with peers, who themselves are recognized as technical experts within their own organizations, in many outside organizations to include other ATEC ranges and laboratories, and numerous organizations within the Army, Joint Services, 5 Eyes & NATO Nations, as well as private industry.

In 2009, he received his Doctoral Degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). LeSueur is a member of the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) C2SIM Product Development Group (PDG) that is charged with the development of the Simulation/Command & Control Interface Standard that the NATO Modeling & Simulation Group (MSG-145) is integrating and operationalizing. LeSueur is also a member of the UAH Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Industrial Advisory Board working with academia in a joint effort to review program requirements, educational objectives, review awards, and support accreditations. LeSueur routinely conducts distributed testing training classes for government personnel and for conferences and symposiums covering distributed test design, execution, command and control, network design, and data traffic considerations.

NDIA plans to present the Test and Evaluation Awards during their Systems and Mission Engineering Conference, Oct. 4 through 7 at the Orlando Renaissance Sea World. Otherwise, NDIA will present the awards virtually as was done in 2020.