Vulnerability Toolkit

The Defense Systems Information Analysis Center (DSIAC) Vulnerability Toolkit (VTK) is a suite of software tools supporting the performance of ballistic vulnerability and lethality studies involving military systems. The goal of the toolkit is to act as the “one-stop shop” for ballistic vulnerability/lethality analysis, providing analysts with the software needed to conduct pre-test predictions, concept evaluations, trade studies, and requirements compliance verification studies. The software provided with the toolkit helps the analyst to determine the probability of kill (Pk) for a system of interest given a particular ballistic threat impact.

The Vulnerability Toolkit can support analyses for a range of systems and a range of ballistic threats. Primarily, the toolkit supports analyses of Air Force and Navy fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, but it has also supported assessments of ground systems, small boats, and even orbital vehicles. In terms of threats, the software in the toolkit can model projectiles (e.g., ball rounds, armor-piercing rounds, armor-piercing incendiary rounds, high explosive rounds, etc.), missile fragments, shaped-charge jets, and missiles. The software in the toolkit handles threat analyses using a variety of methodologies.

The primary piece of software in the Vulnerability Toolkit is the Computation of Vulnerable Area Tool (COVART); however, the toolkit also includes a number of other tools helpful in conducting vulnerability/lethality studies. A wide cross-section of the Department of Defense community, including the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC), Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), and the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), are responsible for the development and maintenance of the software on the toolkit.

The following is a list of the major software tools included:

• COVART 6.5
  • FASTGEN 6.1.1
  • BRL-CAD 7.12.4
  • FATEPEN 3.3.8
  • ProjPen 2.6
  • IGNITE 1.2.0
  • FLASH 2.0
• Shazam 3.3
• VulnView 3.2

Apart from these larger pieces of software, the Vulnerability Toolkit also provides utilities that help users to develop and check inputs as well as analyze and visualize outputs. The software provided by the toolkit may change from release to release, depending on the development of additional capabilities and the evolving needs of the vulnerability/lethality community.