News Notes
Compiled by Eric Edwards
ROBBINS RECEIVES LICHTEN AWARD
In March, the Vertical Flight Society (VFS) named Mr. Joshua Robbins from The Boeing Company as one of the regional winners of the 2024 Robert L. Lichten technical award. The award, named in memory of tiltrotor pioneer and past VFS president Robert Lichten, is presented to VFS members who have not previously presented the results of their work at a technical meeting. Mr. Robbins was named the VFS’s Western US Region winner for his paper “Development of a Lightweight, Crash-Tolerant Fuel Bladder” (a version of which was published in the 2024 summer issue of the ASJ).
For more information, visit https://vtol.org/awards-and-contests/vertical-flight-society-awards.
CDIRS BACK ONLINE
JASPO is pleased to announce that the Combat Data Incident Reporting System (CDIRS) is fully operational and available for use again. The system was placed back online in March, after receiving multiple software security updates.
For those not familiar with CDIRS, the system is a SIPRNet web-based aircraft damage repository funded by JASPO and managed by the SURVICE Engineering Company. Its development is rooted in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), when several initiatives were undertaken to promote increased effectiveness, affordability, and readiness of U.S. military aircraft. Part of these initiatives was to develop susceptibility- and vulnerability-reduction technologies, as well as refine survivability assessment methodologies.
To support these goals, JASPO instantiated a classified file transfer protocol site to enable forward-deployed and U.S.-based users to easily trade combat data incident files. Then, as interest grew and users provided feedback, the full CDIRS was developed to better support the survivability community in aircraft battle damage and survivability analysis.
Since OIF, CDIRS has been populated with data from more than 2,000 aircraft damage assessments conducted by U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force Joint Combat Assessment Team members. U.S. survivability and sustainability professionals then use these data to develop Joint aircraft survivability requirements and solutions for current and future force protection.
Note that CDIRS access is available to DoD active duty, civilians, and support contractors with an active SIPRNet account and valid need-to-know. New CDIRS user requests should be submitted to Ms. Lisa McIntosh at lisa.e.mcintosh.ctr@mail.smil.mil or 937-255-4467.
SURVIVABILITY SECTION FEATURED IN NEJ
Image Courtesy of the NEJ
The Naval Engineers Journal (NEJ), the quarterly publication of the American Society of Naval Engineers, recently published eight survivability-focused articles in its spring 2024 issue. The articles—including one coauthored by JASPO Principal Military Director CAPT Stephan Bussell—compose section 3 of the journal’s special double issue, themed “Transforming Test and Evaluation to Support the Joint Force in All Domain Operations.”
Aligning with the 2022 National Defense Strategy, each section of the issue addresses one of the five strategic “pillars” identified to support test and evaluation transformation. Section 3, titled “Improve the Survivability of DOD in a Contested Environment,” includes the following articles and authors:
- “Multi-Domain Targeting in Support of Operations Planning” by Cameron Taylor.
- “Mission-Based Risk Assessment—Essential Tool in the Arsenal of DoD System Development, Operations, and Sustainment” by Randy Saunders, Ryan Brunton, J. Thomas Walrond, and Daniel Boseman.
- “Combined Physical and Virtual Testing—The New Survivability Testing Reality” by Brian Beechener, Adam Goldberg, Russell Kupferer, and Jonathan Stergiou.
- “Digital Technology—A Universal Integrator—Enabling Full-Spectrum Survivability Evaluations” by Bill Bryant, Charlie Fisher, Daniel Boseman, and Juliana Ivancik.
- “Applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Model Complex Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations” by Matthew Goldsbury, Dustan Hellwig, and Jeremy Werner.
- “Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Requirements Critical to Cyberspace Survivability” by Steve Pitcher and Tom Andress.
- “Proposed Courses of Action to Improve the DoD Cyber Survivability Posture” by Nikolas Guertin, Sandra Hobson, Ray Letteer, J. Thomas Walrond, Steve Pitcher, and Daniel Boseman.
- “Combat Assessment—Key to Joint Operation Planning, Readiness, and Design of Lethal and Survivable Systems” by Patrick Goodwin, Nicholas Lucash, and CAPT Stephan Bussell.
To obtain copies of the articles, subscribe to the NEJ, or find out more about the American Society of Naval Engineers (which includes an NEJ subscription with its membership), visit www.navalengineers.org.
NEW RF DEW BOOK PUBLISHED
Mr. John Tatum, a long-time high-power radio frequency/microwave (HPRF/M) and directed energy weapon (DEW) expert and educator, has recently authored a new book. The 144-page paperback, titled Radio Frequency Directed Energy Systems and Their Effects, was published this summer by the Directed Energy Professional Society (DEPS). Based on a similarly titled short cause taught by Mr. Tatum, the text is intended to provide readers with an introductory look at HPRF/M DEWs and their effects on electronic target systems, including:
- the basics of nonkinetic energy weapons (NKEWs)
- the distinctives, advantages, and limitations of DEWs within the NKEW family
- the types of HPM DEWs (narrowband and wideband), their similarities and differences from traditional electronic warfare (EW) and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, and the capabilities they provide to the Warfighter
- how HPM energy couples into a target’s electronics and the effects it can produce
- basic modeling and simulation tools for estimating the probability of target failure as a function of weapon power density and range
- an example of how to compute the probability of failure of a notional helicopter as a function of incident HPM power density and how the result can be used to develop protection criteria.
Mr. Tatum is currently an electronic systems engineer with the SURVICE Engineering Company. He previously served for almost 4 decades in the U.S. Army Research Laboratory’s Electronics Division, where he directed and participated in numerous EM/RF/M effects studies on military systems and supporting infrastructure and used the effects data to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of RF/M DE concepts for various Army applications. He also served as the Army chairperson of the RF/M DE Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual Working Group and chaired the RF/M DE Effects Panel for the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Technology Panel on DE systems. In addition, Mr. Tatum is a DEPS fellow, a member of the Association of Old Crows Electronic Warfare Society, and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
For more information about, or to purchase a copy of, the new book, visit https://www.deps.org/.
AEROSPACE CYBER NOTAM
If you haven’t already done so, check out the newly expanded online Aerospace Cyber NOTAM, which is prepared and distributed free of charge roughly every week by MTSI. In the spirit of the traditional “Notice to Airmen” (NOTAM) alerts—which provide pilots with up-to-the-minute developments regarding potential hazards or other issues that could affect pending flight operations—the Aerospace Cyber NOTAM is intended to provide aviation and space system practitioners in Government and industry with pertinent “nuggets” of emerging cyber-related aerospace information gathered from across the Internet.
NOTAMs are typically limited to a few pages with entries organized into the categories of General Aviation Cybersecurity, Embedded Systems and Avionics Security, General Cyber Physical Systems Security, and (now) Space-Related Cybersecurity. Each entry contains a short summary of the identified post, the date it appeared, and a link to the post itself.
For more information about the Aerospace Cyber NOTAM or to request to be added to the distribution list, send an email to aviationcyber@mtsi-va.com.
2024 JMUM MEETS AT JHU/APL
U.S. Air Force Photo by A1C Katelynn Jackson
In March, approximately 135 survivability practitioners from Government and industry gathered at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD, for the 26th annual Joint Aircraft Survivability Program (JASP) Model Users Meeting (JMUM). The purpose of the annual 3-day meeting—hosted by the Defense Systems Information Analysis Center (DSIAC) in partnership with the JASP Office and select model managers—was to promote ongoing modeling and simulation (M&S) support and collaboration throughout the aircraft survivability community.
As in previous years, this year’s JMUM included a plenary session of threat briefings, model overviews, model success stories, and future development plans; concurrent breakout sessions for the air-to-air engagement, surface-to-air engagement, and vulnerability/lethality model groups; and Configuration Control Board meetings for respective JASP-funded models.
During the breakout sessions, model managers detailed model support efforts (often driven by software change requests submitted by users) undertaken during the past year. Likewise, model developers discussed their recent development efforts and planned efforts for next year; and model users presented example use cases, discussed updates they have made to the models to fit their specific needs, and identified deficiencies they would like to have addressed.
This year’s JMUM also introduced the topic of Full-Spectrum Survivability Assessment to the plenary session, where keynote speaker Dr. Gregory Ruderman from the Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, as well as other briefers, highlighted the emerging importance of developing accurate and credible M&S capability to assess aircraft survivability mission threads and kill webs across multispectral and multidomain operational environments.
For more information or to submit abstracts, input, and/or suggestions for next year’s JMUM, please contact Mr. Alfred Yee at alfred.yee@dsiac.org.
