Project expands to develop faster-than-real-time modeling and simulation for secure mission planning
ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military researchers are expanding an industry contract to develop a faster-than-real time mission planning system to enable senior military commanders to practice developing concepts of operations (CONOPS), composing force structures, allocating resources, and planning for technology insertion.
Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., announced an $8 million add-work order Friday to Radiance Technologies Inc. in Huntsville, Ala., for the Secure Advanced Framework for Simulation and Modeling (SAFE-SiM) program.
The SAFE-SiM modeling and simulation architecture is to enable military commanders to conduct theater-wide, multi-domain, mission-level modeling and simulation, from seafloor to space, including cyber and electromagnetic spectrum capabilities.
DARPA awarded initial SAFE-SiM contracts in August 2020 to Radiance Technologies and to Cole Engineering Services Inc. in Orlando, Fla., for enabling technologies in secure mission planning. Friday's order increases the value of the Radiance contract to $31.4 million.
Over the past few decades, projecting military power has relied on complex capabilities to achieve results that separate weapon systems or segments of military power cannot handle. U.S. military and intelligence modeling, furthermore, cannot provide the necessary support.
Existing simulations typically are limited to specific mission areas, and are not well suited for interactions across the cyber, space, air, ground, and sea domains. Creating mission-level scenarios, moreover, is time consuming and requires specialized training.
The SAFE-SiM project will create an intuitive modeling and simulation user interface for rapid scenario construction, advanced visualization capabilities, and analytical tools that enable broad analysis of simulated data.
Related: Simulation and mission rehearsal relies on state-of-the-art computing
Radiance Technologies is developing theater-wide, multi-domain, mission level modeling; user interface; analytic and visual tools; and hardware and software solutions with multi-level security.
These information security tools should enable the system to ingest modeling and simulation data up to and including SECRET, TOP SECRET, SCI, and Special Access (SAP) classification levels through external network connections, rapid reconfigure the classification level of the modeling and simulation environment, and dynamically tailor analytical results several kinds of end users.
On this order Radiance will do the work Huntsville, Ala.; Basking Ridge, N.J.; Menlo Park and Poway, Calif.; and Rome, N.Y., and should be finished by April 2023. For more information contact Radiance Technologies online at www.radiancetech.com, or DARPA at www.darpa.mil.
John Keller | Editor-in-Chief
John Keller is the Editor-in-Chief, Military & Aerospace Electronics Magazine--provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronics and optoelectronic technologies in military, space and commercial aviation applications. John has been a member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since 1989 and chief editor since 1995.
