2007-2008 Assessment of the Army Research Laboratory (2009) / Chapter Skim
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5 Survivability and Lethality Analysis Directorate
5 Survivability and Lethality Analysis Directorate
Pages 57-70
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From page 57... ...
Its mission includes SLV analysis and assessment through the entire life cycle of major Army systems, from development through acquisition to deployment and operation, in the context of a full spectrum of battlespace environments and threat forces, tactics, and systems. SLAD further provides advice to Army Headquarters, program executive officers, and s ubordinate program managers, as well as an array of other evaluators, system developers, and Army contractors, and other defense-oriented laboratories.
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From page 58... ...
As noted previously, the SLAD portfolio is very granular, and the Board can sample a relatively small fraction of the individual tasks supported by SLAD. SLAD management has tended to emphasize the operationally oriented tasks and special studies in developing agendas for the assessment meetings.
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From page 59... ...
Developing this methodology in collaboration with an extramural team other than the team that has been developing the S4 tool would stimulate needed fresh perspectives in SoS analysis. In early 2008, a group consisting of members from the Panel on Survivability and Lethality Analysis and the Soldier Systems Panel met with ARL management on an STI proposal jointly prepared by SLAD and the Human Research and Engineering Directorate (HRED)
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From page 60... ...
. SLAD now has an encouraging agreement with the JTRS Joint Program Executive Office that it will get actual JTRS code (the Board expects that it will be for both soldier radio waveform [SRW]
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From page 61... ...
The experience gained should be leveraged to develop an overall network vulnerability assessment methodology and to define specific metrics to evaluate performance in this area. Another area presented was SLAD's black core analysis.
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From page 62... ...
In other fields, established communities of computational experts have found high-performance computing to be a disruptive development, opening new frontiers that had not been appreciated because existing computational platforms were adequate to perform conventional analyses. Finally, the Board notes that it previously urged SLAD not to commit exclusively to S4 as its principal SoS simulation tool, particularly if given the opportunity to apply additional resources from an ARL STI.
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From page 63... ...
The SLAD role in the program is to re-create the reported casualty-generating event by modeling vehicle configuration and crew positions, to analyze and model threat characteristics through reverse engineering, to compare predicted injuries and platform vulnerabilities with the actual data, and to examine potential mitigation techniques. In spite of uncertainties in the reported events and difficulties caused by different terminologies used in the diverse communities, it has proven possible in many cases to apply such SLAD tools as Modular UNIX-based Vulnerability Estimation Suite (MUVES)
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From page 64... ...
This is a case in which SLAD overcame its insular tendencies with significant results for its customers and similarly significant professional development of its staff. Extending the domain of collaboration may yield additional insight and data that can be used to improve the models in ORCA.
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From page 65... ...
Further assuming that ARL has rules for using applications on classified networks, those rules should be reviewed specifically with respect to BRL-CAD. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES MUVES-3 The Board was astonished, during its 2007 meeting at White Sands Missile Range, to learn that the initial operational capability for MUVES-3, SLAD's primary integrative software environment and interface between its many engineering models, had been deferred by several years (leaving the existing MUVES-S2 as the primary production tool for at least 5 years)
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From page 66... ...
, it was not possible to determine if a service would be suitable for MUVES-3 without building a prototype system. A detailed performance model would have allowed developers simply to measure the remote procedure invocation overhead and have an immediate decision about suitability.
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From page 67... ...
, as shown in Table 5.1. No attempt has been made in the figures shown in Table 5.1 to weight the percentages by the importance or relative numbers of analysis types, which range from air vehicle survivability to spare Mark Burdeshaw, Army Research Laboratory, "MUVES 3 Overview," presentation to the Army Research Laboratory Technical Assessment Board, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, July 23, 2008, Slides 78 to 90.
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From page 68... ...
SLAD also reviewed work being done to model threat warning systems with respect to evaluating potential false alarms, an analysis of threat characteristics versus other battlefield signature sources, and a possible approach to discriminating threats from battlefield clutter. However, the Board was not shown a system-level analysis.
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From page 69... ...
However, the principal lesson of the MUVES-3 project is that SLAD failed to develop a management construct, including requirements definition, milestones, reviews, and diagnostics, up to the task of modernizing its existing software environment. This shortfall in systems engineering is far from unique in the national security technical community, and it is encouraging that SLAD management is taking the lessons learned seriously.
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From page 70... ...
SLAD insularity significantly compromises the directorate's ability to leverage academic and commercial developments, especially in such areas as computer and network security, biomechanics, and software development, where investment outside the Army dwarfs organic resources and capabilities. Academic collaboration is also a key to strategic workforce development, since the exposure of graduate and undergraduate students to highly relevant applied research and development may enhance SLAD's recruiting pool.
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