REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. -- With a thousand miles between them, Army teams from Redstone Arsenal and Fort Dix, N.J., worked together to support the Army’s Network Modernization strategy.
On July 28, team members of the Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) and the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) On-the-Move project manager completed this year’s C4ISR capability assessment in Fort Dix.
On the final day of the exercise, the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command’s Simulation Center successfully ran a One Semi Automated Force brigade scenario simulation with more than 3,000 entities on the High Performance Computer asset-Simulation Machine Queue, the backup machine for the exercise.
“We were supporting CERDEC for the event,” said Alesya Paschal, SMDC Future Warfare Center engineer. “They were using a high-performance computer to conduct the testing and we were their backup if Fort Dix had problems or issues with their high-performance computer.”
The SimCenter was created in 1981 for missile defense research design and analysis of missile defense systems. The SimCenter uses state-of-the-art computer and simulation resources and provides high-performance computer assets.
Its vision is to be the Army’s premier center for air, space and missile defense high-performance computational support. The SimCenter works to provide the tools, technologies and expertise needed to realize both the SMDC and Missile Defense Agency vision for delivering air, space and missile defense.
“The tests were conducted in the July timeframe and the results should be due in September,” Paschal said. The outcome will help project where the Army needs to go for future C4ISR devices and that was our role in supporting the tests.”
Since 2005, CERDEC and PM C4ISR OTM perform a yearly C4ISR experiment at Fort Dix. These exercises have been recently renamed C4ISR and Network Modernization to reflect the program’s alignment with the Army’s Network Modernization strategy.
The experiments are live test and evaluation events, assessing C4ISR system-of-systems configuration. They use a relevant environment to assess emerging capabilities, depending on simulation to provide this environment.
Large numbers of simulated entities stimulate and stress battle command systems to depict ISR sensor assets. These simulated entities are inserted as battle command messages and sensor information at multiple echelon-specific “injection” points. Additionally, the simulated entities represent two brigade combat teams and provide scale that could not be achieved with live assets alone.
“This test was for assessing the C4I tools within the Army,” Paschal said. “Space and Missile Defense Command was providing the ISR data that actually simulated the C4I devises at CERDEC to actually do their operations.”
The main simulation driver is the Army’s OneSAF. OneSAF is the Army’s entity-level simulation that provides a simulation of real-world battlefield situations using validated physical models and doctrinally correct behavior models.
It can support analysis, acquisition, planning, testing, training and experimentation. OneSAF allows users to compose a wide range of complete simulation systems from a set of component-based tools, develop new or extend existing tools, as well as compose new single or multi-resolution entities, units and associated behaviors from existing physical and behavioral software components.
OneSAF also accurately and effectively represents activities that include: intelligence, movement and maneuver, fire support, protection, sustainment and command and control.
“One thing we want to give the average citizen is a better appreciation of how the Space and Missile Defense Command is actually impacting the Army as a whole,” Paschal said.
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