During the Executive Session of the Science and Technology Board
meeting held at NATO HQ, Brussels on 26-27 March 2014, the following
teams were granted the 2014 STO Scientific Achievement Award :
The
Executive Session was also the opportunity for the Board to award the
2014 Von Karman Medal, a selection of excellence within excellence.
After a difficult selection, the Science and Technology Board decided to
award the Von Karman Medal to Dr Robert Hintz.
The Award Ceremony will take place during the 2014 Fall Science and
Technology Board meeting to be held from 17-19 September in Bratislava,
Slovakia.
AVT-174 on “Qualification and Structural Design Guidelines for Military Unmanned Air Vehicles”
Modern
UAVs cover a variety of different capabilities which make these
platforms important and indispensable for military operations. The
qualification and admission of these systems is still a big challenge
with unsolved issues. Unmanned air vehicles are being developed today at
an ever increasing rate. Some are being developed by traditional
aircraft development organizations working hard to meet customer needs
and desires and producing a large variety of such aircraft. But many of
today’s UAVs are being developed by nontraditional aircraft companies,
start-ups as well as companies that do not have a long tradition of
meeting armed forces level specifications. In many cases the aircraft
being fielded today have not had anything like a conventional structural
qualification test program, and they are certified to fly by exception
to the current rules in restricted and combat airspaces.
Therefore the AVT-174 task group on “Qualification and Structural
Design Guidelines for Military Unmanned Air Vehicles” was established to
recommend a set of guidelines for design criteria and structural
qualification for unmanned air vehicles (UAV). AVT-174 delivered a
significant contribution with its high quality guideline for NATO and
NATO nations. The scientific approach conducted by AVT-174 considering
general UAV design requirements, structural design criteria as well as
validation approaches and the contributions from 12 NATO nations under
the umbrella of the NATO STO led to guidelines the application of which
would reduce the level of effort required to qualify a UAV platform,
specifically the testing requirements based on STANAG 4671. The benefits
of this AVT-174 activity to the military services of NATO are
threefold:
- Solid technical foundation for qualification criteria for both fixed wing and rotary wing UAVs.
- Consistent guidelines across a wider breadth of aircraft size,
speed, weight and payload lethality than manned aircraft will ever have
to cover;
- Cost savings from a set of guidelines that allows progression from
prototype, to limited operational vehicles, to fully qualified vehicles
that does not duplicate testing from single step of the progression to
another, but builds toward eventual full qualification of the aircraft.
UAVs cover a broader range of the flight spectrum than manned
vehicles so this is why the task group delivered a major innovative
strategy. This Strategy is based on different guidelines which have been
developed by the task group for qualifying a system across the panorama
of flight from vehicles weighing just grams to those crossing the sky
at re-entry velocities, from vertical takeoff and landing vehicles to
vehicles that remain airborne for weeks at a time and this has proven an
enormous challenge. The results generated by the task group were
directly exploited within NATO and NATO nations as they were directly
requested by various institutions from Industry and research
organizations. The French Ministry of Defense has already used the loads
portion of the guidelines to qualify a prototype UAV for flight testing
and there was a special request for the results by the Boeing Vice
President, the US Air Force Structural Integrity Program Manager and the
NATO JCGUAS. AVT-174 has produced a truly scientific and extraordinary
contribution to NATO and NATO nations within the field of UAV
qualification. This contribution will result in a significant reduction
in the cost of UAV acquisition, and reduced operational cost due to a
higher deployment ratio, more time on station, and reduced maintenance
costs in the field.
CMRE Environmental Knowledge and Operational Effectiveness (EKOE)
The
NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) Award recognizes the
recent achievements of the CMRE EKOE (Environmental Knowledge and
Operational Effectiveness) working group on “Underwater Gliders for
Discreet and Cost-Effective Intelligence Preparation of the
Battlespace”. In particular the team has been prized for the quality
level of the science and technology released, for the significance of
results obtained for defence, and for the quality and degree of
collaboration demonstrated. CMRE scientists successfully developed and
demonstrated the use of fleets of robotic platforms for characterization
and forecasting of the underwater environment. “This prize comes truly
from a collaborative effort, among the team members, the departments
within the CMRE, the member Nations, intra-STO bodies and inter-NATO
bodies”, says Rear Admiral (Retired) Hank Ort, CMRE Director. “We are
proud of their work”. The Award seals five years of research
and experimentation at CMRE, where existing glider technologies have
been customized for military oceanography applications. In particular
the feasibility of adapting commercial off-the-shelf unmanned underwater
gliders to characterize the underwater environment for naval operations
of NATO forces, in lieu of (or in conjunction with) traditional survey
ships or naval assets, has been demonstrated. Moreover, through
customization of the available technology, for example the introduction
of novel sensor payloads and interfaces to the flight control systems,
the feasibility to determine additional environmental parameters
specific to naval requirements has also been demonstrated, and will
continue to be pursued in future development efforts. The main scope of
the work is to develop a cost-effective, discreet, fast-relocatable and
easy deployable underwater monitoring system to address NATO and Nations
security needs.
“The environmental information provided by the
gliders has proved valuable and helped everyone in that very difficult
job of finding submarines that don't want to be found”, said Capt(N)
Walt Luthiger USN (Chief of Staff of COMSUBSOUTH), at the end of the
NATO exercise Proud Manta 2011. CMRE gliders capabilities have been
tested as well during exercise Proud Manta 2012 and Noble Mariner 2012,
and in numerous scientific campaigns. The CMRE activities also prove to
be useful to de-risk prospective national acquisition programs, and to
foster interoperability by including standards for data formats, data
processing, and mission planning. Cooperation with several nations, NATO
and international bodies has heavily supported the programme of work.
Furthermore, the scientific results of the research
efforts and their substantive potential for exploitation have been
documented in more than 50 CMRE reports, journal publications,
conference presentations and proceedings. Public outreach has included
lectures and static displays in local area science festivals in La
Spezia and Genoa (Italy), as well newspaper and magazine articles. In
addition, CMRE hosted the first workshop on Military Applications of
Underwater Glider Technology in 2013, with representatives from 6
Nations in attendance representing the military, industry, and defence
science sectors.
The CMRE Programme Team of MANEX ’14 sea trial has been also nominated.
Data Farming in Support of NATO (MSG-088)
Data Farming in Support of NATO (MSG-088) has been awarded with the SAA 2014. Data Farming
is a process that has been developed to support decision-makers by
focusing on and answering questions. It uses an inter-disciplinary
approach to examine questions of interest with large number of
alternatives. Data farming continuously asks the question “what-if?” and
allows for the examination of uncertain events with numerous possible
outcomes and provides the capability of executing enough experiments so
that both overall and unexpected results may be captured and examined
for insights.
The objective of MSG-088, the Modeling and Simulation Task Group
“Data Farming in Support of NATO,” was to assess and document the data
farming methodology to be used for decision support to NATO Forces.
Proof-of-concept explorations involving questions and models of interest
to NATO nations also were undertaken. The task Groop took the results
of both the assessments and explorations to recommend and demonstrate a
way forward for implememnting data farming methods and processes in NATO
modeling and simulation contexts.
The
work documented the six domains of data farming and how they combine to
support decision-making. The domains are collaborative processes,
rapid scenario prototyping, model development, design of experiments,
high performance computing, and analysis and visualization. The work
also included a humanitarian assistance and a force protection case
study that served as proof-of-concept explorations of the data farming
concept.
Through the codification of the data farming process, the work of
MSG-088 provides a concept for simulation-based analysis that improves
NATO's decision-making capability. The two case studies were very
relevant and the work has already catalyzed two additional teams using
data farming in the important areas of operational defense planning, a
critical need in this era of constrained defence budgets, and in cyber
security, a subject that undoubtedly will continue to increase in
importance to the success of NATO missions in the future.
Participants
from 9 different nations contributed to MSG-088. The task group had
open collaboration among the nations and a high degree of credibility
due to the acceptance of the work across all them. The collaborators are
world experts in their areas and that fact was essential in
contributing to the quality of the work. They came from various academic
disciplines that were synergistic and complementary and included both
military and scientific backgrounds.
Command and Control (C2) Agility
The
SAS-085 team recently completed its work on “Command and Control (C2)
Agility”, which enables entities to effectively and efficiently employ
the resources they have in a timely manner in a variety of missions and
circumstances. The team’s objective was to focus on improving nations’
abilities to successfully effect, cope with, and/or exploit changes in
circumstances by use of improved C2 methods. The team was formed to
improve the understanding of C2 Agility and assess its importance to
NATO, and successfully accomplished its objectives by articulating the
principles of C2 Agility by creating a C2 Agility Conceptual Model,
validating this model and establishing the importance of improving C2
Agility with empirical evidence obtained from a set of retrospective
case studies and simulation-based experiments. Further, it identified
next steps toward practical implementation in NATO operations and
priorities for increasing the rigor and practicality of methods for
measuring and improving C2 Agility.
The team was recognized for its efforts by its selection as one of
the 2014 Scientific Achievement Award (SAA) winners. A link to the
team’s final report can be found here: http://www.cso.nato.int/Pubs/rdp.asp?RDP=STO-TR-SAS-085
SCI-222 Electronic Warfare Issues of Software Defined Radio Threats”
SCI-222 RTG Electronic Warfare Issues of Software Defined Radio
recently received the 2014 Scientific Achievement Award. Led by Ir Jan
Punt from the Netherlands, over ten nations participated in the
activity to include two Partners for Peace nations. The Task Group
conducted its work from April 2010 – December 2013 and will publish
their findings and recommendations in a technical report in Spring
2014.
SCI-222 RTG explored the potential application of electronic warfare
(EW) functions using software defined radio development approaches. The
Task Group included as part of their work the consideration of new
capabilities in multi-function systems and networked sensors and
jammers. Within this context, the group explored potential solutions
for dealing with electromagnetic interference created between
communication and electronic warfare systems using well-developed
software defined radio architectures, interfaces and standards. The
work completed and products created by this Task Group are relevant and
compelling.
To support the SCI-222 study and assessment, a multi-national
experiment was conducted in Oslo, Norway, with participation from across
the international partners within SCI-222. The experiment included
software defined radio hardware and systems provided by a variety of
national participants and implemented as Electronic Sensing (ES)
detection systems. The effort demonstrated networked data detection and
distribution and proved the potential for software defined radios to
support EW applications. In addition, the experiment provided valuable
real-world application results to support the study assessment.
The study used two scenario use-cases for assessing advantages and
disadvantages: Countering Radio-Controlled Improvised Explosive Devises
(C-RCIED) and conducting Distributed Electronic Sensing (ES). In both
cases, simultaneous EW and communications operations are critical to
operational efficiency and effectiveness. In the case of C-RCIED
operations, de-confliction of these two radio frequency (RF) functions
was achieved by allowing only one to operate at a time. In the case of
Distributed ES, traditional stove-piped system development resulted in
non-real time data collection and dissemination. SCI-222 derived
strategies and assessed impacts of software defined technology
approaches which could enable multi-function systems to support
simultaneous EW and communication operations within both C-RCIED and
Distributed ES operations.
SCI-222 derived potential
advantages and disadvantages to leveraging software defined radio
development techniques and architectures in electronic warfare system
design. These results included strategies for implementing
multi-function systems capable of simultaneously supporting EW and
communication functionality with assessment of important considerations
that should be given to such system designs. The work of SCI-222 is a
definite potential capability improvement for NATO and partner nations
as IEDs will remain a weapon of choice in current and future operating
environments.
SET-144 RTG on “Mitigation of Ship Electro-Optical Susceptibility against Conventional and Asymmetric Threats”
The SET-144 RTG on “Mitigation of Ship Electro-Optical Susceptibility
against Conventional and Asymmetric Threats” focused on several new
areas identified as critical to understanding and mitigating the
following two ship susceptibilities:
The extraordinary contribution of SET-144 is that the team designed
and conducted realistic S&T experiments (SQUIRREL) on an ocean
vessel. Specifically, they successfully tested the effectiveness of an
IR ship signature reduction system and conclusively showed that this IR
signature management system reduced the ship’s IR signature, made it
significantly more difficult for threat missiles to acquire it, and
improved the effectiveness of off-board decoys against threat missiles
in their terminal phase.
These demonstrated capabilities in the IR regime are immensely
important for the self-protection of NATO naval vessels. To make their
results accessible and beneficial to all NATO navies, the participating
countries consolidated their results into a comprehensive database. To
achieve these results, they performed the difficult task of seamlessly
interweaving research from 5 critical areas:
- IR modeling of military ships;
- shipborne IR Search and Track (IRST) systems and their detection of point targets;
- IR signature/detectability of small craft;
- evaluation of IR ship signature monitoring and management systems;
- IR modeling challenges unique to the littoral environment.
Moreover, their results and outreach to signatures of naval ships
from other sensing modalities (radar, acoustics, optical, etc.) have set
the foundation for merging all ship measurements into a comprehensive
ship signature system and database. Having comprehensive knowledge of
ship signatures for all sensing modalities would enable a NATO ship to
adapt its composite signature to achieve optimal protection against a
wide range of threats.
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