N101-004 TITLE: Air Anti-Submarine Warfare Modeling and Simulation Tool

TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Air Platform, Sensors, Battlespace

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMA-264, High Altitude ASW, PMA-290, Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance

RESTRICTION ON PERFORMANCE BY FOREIGN CITIZENS (i.e., those holding non-U.S. Passports): This topic is "ITAR Restricted." The information and materials provided pursuant to or resulting from this topic are restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), 22 CFR Parts 120 - 130, which control the export of defense-related material and services, including the export of sensitive technical data. Foreign Citizens may perform work under an award resulting from this topic only if they hold the "Permanent Resident Card", or are designated as "Protected Individuals" as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3). If a proposal for this topic contains participation by a foreign citizen who is not in one of the above two categories, the proposal will be rejected.

OBJECTIVE: Develop a stochastic simulation that evaluates all phases of the Air Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) mission, at engagement-level fidelity.

DESCRIPTION: An Air ASW few-vs-few simulation would provide NAVAIR with a unique capability to perform Air ASW analysis acceptable to programs and meaningful to war fighters. There are many tools and simulations that examine specific parts of the Air ASW mission, such as radar periscope detection, multi-static active acoustics, and passive acoustics. There are also several tools that examine systems or systems of systems and the mission or campaign level. What is lacking is a model that evaluates the entire Air ASW mission, from detection through localization through weapon drop, to an appropriate degree of fidelity to quantify the operational effectiveness of Air ASW systems. Typically mission and campaign-level simulations are capable of evaluating across a broad spectrum of missions and platforms, providing quantitative data for "what it takes to win" measures of effectiveness. These tools traditionally do not possess the fidelity to quantify the value of individual sensors or weapons, or other factors such as velocity, flight profile, buoy patterns, etc. The problem to be solved is to develop a stochastic simulation that bridges the gap between engineering-level models and mission and campaign-level models and allows for a high-fidelity, quantitative assessment of various piece of the entire Air ASW mission.

This simulation should consider advanced mathematical modeling and operations research techniques to appropriately represent current and future aspects of search theory, area of uncertainty expansion, environmental factors, data fusion, acoustic and nonacoustic sensors, and aircraft motion characteristics. The model should represent the complex Air ASW mission at a high level of detail through dissimilar systems and environments. Resulting analyses, from the tool, would demonstrate the utility of airborne ASW system capabilities and upgrades in the operational context of integrated systems and cooperative tactics and counter-tactics fully informed by representations of enabling factors such as communications, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), and Command and Control (C2). The results of this type of tool could also credibly inform and calibrate more aggregate mission- and campaign-level tools with the full force of their context. Design of experiments, metamodeling and simulation federation techniques should be considered in order to determine an optimal approach to integrating with mission and campaign tools.

PHASE I: Develop and demonstrate initial concept of modeling algorithms incorporating search theory and mathematical modeling techniques.

PHASE II: Fully develop, finalize and validate algorithms. Develop prototype simulation tool and demonstrate analysis capabilities.

PHASE III: Conduct testing verification and validation. Transition tool to end-user.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: The necessary human behavior and search theory algorithms are applicable to various types of unmanned surveillance, particularly subsurface unmanned surveillance. Undersea search vehicles are used for commercial shipping, oil industry, and environmental and oceanographic companies. This tool can be used to provide analysis on the optimal search patterns for vehicles and enable the development of algorithms to allow for greater levels of autonomy and self vectoring.

REFERENCES:
1. Law and Kelton, "Simulation Modeling and Analysis," 2000.

2. Navy Modeling and Simulation Office website; https://nmso.navy.mil/VVA/tabid/58/Default.aspx/

3. Carl, R. Greg, Champagne, L., Hill, Raymond, "Search Theory, Agent Based Simulation, and U-Boats in the Bay of Biscay," Proceedings of the 2003 Winter Simulation Conference; (http://ormstomorrow.informs.org/archive/spring03/Submissions/carl_paper.pdf)

4. Milan, V. "On Naval Power," Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 50, 3rd Quarter 2008, pg 8.

5. Concept of Operation for the 21st Century Task Force ASW; http://www.navy.mil/navydata/policy/asw/asw-conops.pdf

KEYWORDS: Air Anti-Submarine Warfare; Modeling and Simulation; Mathematical Modeling; Operations Research; Search Theory; Stochastic Simulation

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