Enabling Modernization and More

This 27 February, group editor Marty Kauchak completed a wide-ranging interview with Colonel Joseph Nolan, Deputy Director of US Army Modeling and Simulation Office (AMSO). Highlights from their interview are provided below.

The US Army’s annual M&S Forum has become a hallmark of the service’s efforts to put a business practice in place to help manage enterprise-level investments in its six M&S communities. At the same time, the Forum brings together the larger Army M&S “family” to share ideas, best practices and tools, to provide a consistent representation of M&S across the service, and to reduce costs and gain other efficiencies.

The US Army’s annual M&S Forum (the Fourth event convened this February) has become a hallmark of the service’s efforts to put a business practice in place to help manage enterprise-level investments in its six M&S communities. 
Source: AMSO/Eugene Davis

ThisFebruary’s fourth iteration of the forum complemented the service’s recent,“bold steps on how it approaches modernization,” according to Colonel JosephNolan, Deputy Director of U.S. Army Modeling and Simulation Office (AMSO). TheArmy M&S leader added that while his service’s modernization efforts areadvancing well under the leadership of Army Futures Command, a four-starheadquarters, “there was a feeling within the leadership, that these effortswere not synchronized, and we weren’t being as responsive to the warfighter andsoldier that we needed to be.”

AMSO, as theservice M&S lead, took the initiative to include Army Futures Command’sM&S activities in the 2019 Forum’s deliberations, allowing the organizationto also benefit from wider service community’s M&S business practices. Tothat end, 2019 M&S Forum delegates included members from the eight command CrossFunctional Teams leading specific efforts and working special projects. Whileselect cross functional team members initially attended the 2018 M&S Forumto gain basic insights on how the service conducts business within the M&Senterprise, “we followed it up this year with the M&S ‘deep dive’ with eachof the different efforts that Army Futures Command is focused on, to help themunderstand the Army M&S enterprise, what assets the teams have available tothem now, to include data and tools, and help expedite the Cross Functional Teams’M&S successes,” Nolan recalled.

Cross Functional Team areas of focus to help develop the Army Modernization Enterprise include: Long-Range Precision Fires; manned and unmanned capability in Next Generation Combat Vehicle; manned and unmanned platforms for Future Vertical Lift; Army Network; Air and Missile Defense capability; Soldier Lethality; Precision Navigation and Timing; and the Synthetic Training Environment.

2019 M&S Forum delegates (above) included members from the eight, command Cross Functional Teams leading specific efforts and working special projects. 
Source: AMSO/Eugene Davis

The AMSO DeputyDirector emphasized the goal of one focus – the Synthetic Training Environment –is to “expand and distribute simulations down to the battalions and companylevels, with an enhanced capability to model both dense urban environments andany other type of future battlefield we will have moving forward. STE isfocused on leveraging new and emerging technology, to advance the pace, qualityand capability of our training systems.”

And beyondSTE, which is familiar to many MS&Treaders, the AMSO Deputy Director was asked how M&S might be brought tobear in another randomly selected focus area – FVL, for instance. In one case,modeling supports the accurate and quantitative, rapid evolving strategy of manned-unmannedteaming of weapons platforms and their sensors, and other onboard systems. “Andas important, is how do we train to that,” Nolan said and added, “how do wetrain these operators, and that circles back to the Synthetic Training Environment.When you take a look at these emerging capabilities, there is a lot of overlap.The more precise our investments and new concepts – the bigger the bang for thebuck we’ll get.”

Two Significant Activities

The AMSO DeputyDirector called attention to two, major on-going efforts, each whichprominently figured in this M&S Forum’s deliberations.

At the topof Nolan’s list was the Unified Data effort. He explained, “The idea with our UnifiedData effort is focused on providing visibility and access to authoritative dataso we can get consistent representation across the enterprise.” With respect toM&S, there are multiple, different types of content qualifying as unifieddata, including performance data, force structure data and geospatial data.

The notionof quickly and more completely distributing authoritative data to the Cross FunctionalTeams is powerful, with cost avoidance, elimination of redundant investments,and other efficiencies being gained. Nolan emphasized, “That was one of thebig, good wins we had.”

Of addedinterest to training audiences, another part of the Unified Data effort has AMSOpartnering with TRADOC G-2 to obtain notional threat representations fortraining events. Nolan explained there are five notional nations, eachrepresenting a projected threat the Army may face in the future. “We have alsobuilt those notional threats in the same force structure and added parametric data,so we can pull down full threat data as well. Whereas in the past, a unit goinginto training had to create this data from scratch, today, a unit using atraining simulation, battalion staff exercise, can pull down their unit’s forcestructure data, the parametric data associated with all the weapons their unit andthe threat nations’ have, all the way down to the soldier level, with their associatedprobability of kill and probability of hit tables,” he added, and noted, “andall of this reduces set-up time, allowing us to do more ‘sets and reps’,something both the secretary of the Army and chief of staff of the Army arereally looking for in terms of training.”

This datawill be hosted on the Army Organization Server, and will serve as the databroker to process force structure and link it digitally to parametric data.

An initialoperational capability of this May is projected for the force structure andparametric data linkage effort.

In asecond major initiative, Nolan candidly observed, “we’re a little earlier onthe geospatial data process. What we’re focused on is defining the parametersrequired to create both data layers and describe what the future environmentwill look like.” Offering the example of dense urban terrain, the Army islooking to have its One World Terrain and geospatial data efforts focus onhelping to define the data layers, and then working with the authoritativesources for the layers to establish a commonly agreed upon format for the layercontent. From an overarching perspective, the service remains committed totoward cloud-delivered terrain, rendered at the point of use for simulation andcommand and control applications.

Major General Maria Gervais, Deputy Commanding General for the US Army Combined Arms Center-Training and Director, STE Cross Functional Team, is the service lead for One World Terrain and its overarching Synthetic Training Environment. As such, AMSO remains in a direct support role to the STE Cross Function Team to advance these two efforts.

Major General Maria Gervais, Deputy Commanding General for the US Army Combined Arms Center-Training and Director, STE Cross Functional Team, is the service lead for One World Terrain and its overarching Synthetic Training Environment (left) and Colonel Joseph Nolan, Deputy Director of AMSO (right). 
Source: AMSO/Eugene Davis

On the Horizon

Asked topeer out to the end of 2020 and highlight AMSO’s short-term priorities, Nolannoted, first and foremost, the office wants to complete Phase 1 of the Unified Dataeffort, linking force structure data access with parametric data from the Army FuturesCommand’s Army Material Systems Analysis Activity (AMSAA), Aberdeen ProvingGrounds, Maryland. “We want to ensure that capability is accessible, accurateand hardened,” he emphasized.

Concurrently, AMSO will be working in partnership with Army Geospatial Center (AGC), and in support of the STE Cross Functional Team, to advance One World Terrain. Nolan added, “We need to identify what the capabilities really are today, and those emerging capabilities we have, to be able to provide cloud-delivered terrain, machine rendered at the point of use, like mobile apps do. And then, provide that capability with agnostic standards for industry to look at for M&S and command and control. At this point, you hit that fusion of modeling and simulation in support of operations.” This outcome is huge, as it would provide the commander in the field with the capability to implement a simulation of a war plan on system he or she will go to war with.

Eugene Davis, the lead for Data Working Group and Unified Data, addresses delegates during the conference out brief session. 
Source: AMSO

Also onthe office’s planning horizon is bolstering human behavior representation,which calls for modeling human behavior both on the friendly and hostile sides.Nolan explained, “This is less for predictions but more to be able to provideinformation for commanders to make decisions.” While this technology thrustwould identify an authoritative Army lead office for human behavior modeling,through a project’s life cycle, it would conceptually, digitally implement aspecified human behavior model to help inform the emerging capabilitiesoriginating from Army Futures Command, and support commanders during missionanalysis.