2014 NATO STO Awards Recipients

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 :

Von Kárman MedalThe 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”

Qualification and Structural Design Guidelines for Military Unmanned Air VehiclesModern 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)

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)

Force protection modelingData 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.

Humanitarian Assistance ModelingThe 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.

Data Farming Teams at WorkParticipants 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

Command and Control (C2) AgilityThe 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 Group photoSCI-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:

  • threats from infrared (IR) homing missiles (is significant because imaging missile seekers provide high performance at low-cost and the striking contrast of a ship and its contours against an ocean background make it easy to detect and attack);
  • asymmetric threats to ships like highly maneuverable small water craft (have increased significantly in recent years).

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.

Published by AVT

22/04/2014