2017-2018 Assessment of the Army Research Laboratory (2019) / Chapter Skim
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8 Analysis and Assessment
8 Analysis and Assessment
Pages 187-209
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From page 187... ...
The work in the HSI program provides methodologies for the assessment of cognitive and physical human performance trade-offs and workload in support of human systems integration. The Panel on Assessment and Analysis at the Army Research Laboratory conducted a review on July 25-27, 2018, at the U.S.
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From page 188... ...
are a major concern, and the BSVL team is developing tools to predict damage and casualities due to underbody blasts. Without a validated and verified tool to predict the effects of underbody blasts, the Army has been forced to conduct very many underbody blast tests in an attempt to improve underbody blast protection and reduce casualties.
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From page 189... ...
A validated model of underbody blast is important to have as soon as possible to avoid future designs that are very vulnerable to underbody blasts. As another example where the A&A Campaign is behind, in order to lessen combat vehicle weight, ceramic armors have been proposed as a replacement for metal-based armors, but ceramic armor is very sensitive to multihit damage.
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From page 190... ...
At present, there is a lack of active duty military personnel in the BSVL team. Military experience and expertise are vital in developing study plans and understanding results in a military combat context so that efforts better relate to the military environment and the impact of results on the military situation can be more readily understood by the Army community.
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From page 191... ...
Full development and use of this capability can provide additional valuable information in assessing dynamic positioning for both use assessments and realistic dynamic locations for vulnerability assessments. There is a continuing effort to strengthen and develop high-speed flash X-ray imaging for dynamic blast and ballistic assessments; this is an important tool for assessment of injury from physical models to physiological models, providing valuable feedback on the high-rate dynamic response of rapidly deforming personal protection.
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From page 192... ...
Indeed, such detailed medical information offers the opportunity to inform and develop more effective risk models based on battlefield functional capacity, rather than simple risk of injury or fatality reflected in the AIS scores alone. A related challenge for ARL in developing appropriately granular personal vulnerability A&A for military programs is the continued use of injury coding schemes such as AIS to classify injuries.
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From page 193... ...
These previous National Academies studies emphasize the limitations of both the physical models and the underlying injury biomechanics. For example, the expedient "Prather model" for ballistic BABT injury applied to soft VIP body armor for handgun threats in the 1970s was never intended to apply to rifle-round ballistic threats behind hard body armor.
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From page 194... ...
There has been much work, over many years, to improve and extend the capabilities of the digital human models and the accompanying soldier clothing and equipment models. This has allowed comprehensive static evaluation analysis and assessment of male and female soldier accommodation in ground combat vehicles and other systems.
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From page 195... ...
The current version of ORCA uses a 50th percentile male digital human model for all calculations. Creation of several different female and male models of varying anthropometry would significantly enhance the ability of ORCA to provide accurate analytical results.
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From page 196... ...
ARL presented plans to develop digital human models capable of analyzing varied scenarios and conditions that cannot be analyzed today. In addition, plans were put forward to extend accommodation analysis to include the dynamic conditions that vehicle occupants may experience -- for example, rough terrain and improvised explosive device (IED)
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From page 197... ...
The EW SLV team demonstrated the capability to understand commercial RF technologies and successfully apply cyber and EW techniques against those technologies, thereby informing the Army of the risks associated with using commercial technologies in an operational environment. This research included commercial WiFi and 77 GHz (76-81 GHz band)
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From page 198... ...
The EW SLV team has developed partnerships with universities such as Texas A&M; the University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP) ; New Mexico State University (NMSU)
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From page 199... ...
While the EW SLV team is very effective using digital radio frequency memory (DRFM) for electronic attack, which is a more sophisticated EW technique beyond noise jamming, the team would benefit from developing technologies that identify and characterize signals of interest and then developing and using more specific EW techniques that are better targeted toward receivers of interest.
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From page 200... ...
The team has also extended its capabilities to include security analysis of embedded systems that incorporate CanBus networks for internal communications. The Cyber SLV team's services are in very high demand as the Army in-house systems red team.
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From page 201... ...
The Cyber SLV team's work may benefit by adding techniques such as threat modeling and the flaw hypothesis method to its design analysis practices. Recognizing the importance of cybersecurity to today's systems, the Army may want to consider mandating that all system development programs engage ARL to conduct design-level security analysis or consulting early in the system life cycle.
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From page 202... ...
The Cyber SLV team strives to sustain a constant diligent effort to learn about new classes of security vulnerabilities that affect either deployed Army systems or the designs of new systems coming online. This effort will be aided if team personnel routinely attend the major industry and academic security conferences and meetings where these classes of vulnerabilities are presented to the public after disclosure to vendors of the vulnerable systems.
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From page 203... ...
The Army's CASA team performs analyses and assessments to gather insights into how these complex interactions may affect military operational outcomes. The emergence of EW and cybersecurity, as well as unmanned systems, when integrated with manned platforms, may produce unexpected outcomes and emergent behaviors that need to be understood.
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From page 204... ...
Here, the CASA team is integrating its SAGE RF modeling tool to determine how a jammer in the simulated physical space with a discreet position can affect each platform entity's communications abilities at other defined locations in the simulated operational environment. This will provide a much better emulation of real-world radio jamming, because specific platforms may be jammed, while others are less compromised.
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From page 205... ...
Overall, the EW SLV team is very resourceful, making do with limited resources and leveraging tasking to further technology improvements that support analysis and assessment. However, more technical depth of analysis is needed in a few key areas such as EW effects on MANETs and EW technique development beyond broadband noise jamming, radar clutter generation, and inclusion in simulations and experiments.
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From page 206... ...
Military experience and expertise is vital in developing study plans and understanding results in a military combat context so that efforts can relate better to the military environment and the impact of results on the military situation can be more readily understood by the Army community. There is a potential problem when a contractor or 5-year term employee is the only employee possessing a critical skill for a large project of major importance for the Army.
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From page 207... ...
The major factor limiting the Cyber SLV team's ability to make investments and improvements is the day-to-day workload that it faces. The demand for cybersecurity assessments creates considerable pressure on the cybersecurity workforce and in particular limits its ability to develop generally useful
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From page 208... ...
Recommendation: ARL should advocate for the Army to establish a policy that systems under development undergo security analysis at design time rather than soon before deployment. Recommendation: ARL should consider adding up to two senior technical-level personnel to the Cyber SLV team to provide needed enhanced capacity for security design analysis and more generally for the Cyber SLV team's mission.
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From page 209... ...
Recommendation: ARL should expand the complex adaptive systems analysis (CASA) team to include subject matter experts in autonomy, complexity, and emergent behaviors to provide guidance in autonomy developments.
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