NSWCDD Modeling & Simulation proves beneficial to the warfighter

NSWCDD Modeling & Simulation proves beneficial to the warfighter

By Jennifer Erickson, NSWCDD Corporate Communications

Showcasing Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division's (NSWCDD) technical rigor in a wartime posture drew 350-plus professionals to its Modeling & Simulation (M&S) and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) Summit July 16-18 at University of Mary Washington's Dahlgren Campus.

Dahlgren Division, Naval Sea Systems Command Warfare Centers, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of Naval Intelligence, Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S. Naval War College (NWC), industry and academia came to the sixth annual event.

The summit covered a broad range of topics applicable to a naval program at any stage in the acquisition lifecycle, according to John Romano, head of the Aeronautics, Hypersonic Design & Analysis Branch at NSWCDD.

Topics included computational physics, intelligence, machine learning, mission and campaign level modeling, threat engineering and high performance computing. The event featured 30-plus speakers, two panels and 15 posters. For the first time, the summit featured speakers from academia.

"I think it's critical we continue to host these types of events and promote information sharing across not only the warfare centers, but the DoD in general. Understanding these advances in fields such as AI/ML and improving our computing capabilities is going to be essential to rapidly deliver new warfighting capability to the fleet, and really enable us to move forward with our shared vision of a digital engineering environment," Romano said. "I'm really glad the M&S Summit is an opportunity to continue moving the state of Navy knowledge forward."

Partnerships are what help move that knowledge forward.

"Through the digital systems engineering the Navy's running and the Navy Modeling & Simulation Office, we've had a great connection and collaboration with Dahlgren," said Jim Ciarcia, MBSE and Architecture Enabling Products Branch head, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division at NAVAIR. "We want to make sure the things Dahlgren is doing are actively being considered at the Navy level and, of course, cross over to NAVAIR."

Ciarcia highlighted the contributions of Modeling & Simulation to the warfighter.

"The concept of pacing or beating the threat in a wartime is all about evolving faster than they do," Ciarcia said. "M&S is going to play a critical role in that fidelity conversation."

Dahlgren Division is helping add fidelity, accuracy and believability into the adjudicated results of blue (friendly) and red (enemy) decisions during wargaming events at the U.S. Naval War College, according to David Sampson, NWC associate professor, and John Hanus, NWC professor.

Together, the division and college are supporting the warfighter by providing understanding of possible outcomes and the probability of them.

"Wargames aren't able to predict the future in any way, but they help the warfighter better anticipate situations they might find themselves in by looking at the battlespace," Hanus said.

People have been exploring the "battlespace" in military and strategy games such as chess and Risk to train and simulate events.

NSWCDD professionals couple those games with mathematical rigor and work to interpret future states of systems in a variety of disciplines from calculus to differential equations and, eventually, physical models.

After Model-Based Systems Engineering comes M&S and wargaming. A scenario is applied in a Live, Virtual and Constructive Environment (LVCE) before a Test & Experimentation (T&E) event, which involves Sailors and real ships to the tune of millions of dollars, according to Mike Maldonado, NSWCDD Modeling & Simulation Community of Interest lead.

Needless to say, operating in simulated and gaming environments is a more cost effective and safer way to develop solutions for the fleet.

"That's what M&S does. It's providing capabilities to the warfighter quicker," Maldonado said. "There's a lot of stuff going on in the world, so what can we do on the Modeling and Simulation and Model-Based Systems Engineering sides to provide answers, provide information analysis for either the current situation or possible future situations?"

Creating models enables providing answers to questions using real systems in a LVCE so the Sailors are getting sets and reps on the exact system they are going to use aboard ship, but without the cost of putting a ship underway for the training.

"As you can imagine, we cannot bring the ship here and fire the ship guns real time," Maldonado said. "There is a lot of interest in how much we can do in the Live Virtual Constructive instead of Live at Sea Test events."

During the constructive portion, the team feeds information into a simulated ship during an online event, the virtual feature. If the event is live, the team could connect remotely to a ship or plane. This takes technical rigor - combining the physics of a tangible piece of kit and translating it into code so the Sailors can interact with it as if it were in real life.

"It's [LVC's] cheaper, more accessible than a T&E event. We can do more analysis quicker," Maldonado said.

Following an LVC event, the team goes through a verification, validation and accreditation process so the result can be applied to real life.

All of this contributes to a job Maldonado finds rewarding.

"To make sure what we do helps keeps the warfighter safe, return home - that is by far the biggest motivation," Maldonado said.