Test and Evaluation Science and Technology

High-speed/hypersonic weapons are being developed to ensure the continued military superiority and strike capability of the United States including freedom of movement and freedom of action in areas protected by anti-access/area denial defenses. Current weapon system demonstrations and technology development programs include high-speed and hypersonic air-breathing missiles, maneuvering reentry and boost-glide weapons, hypersonic gun-launched projectiles, and air-breathing space access vehicles. These systems require development of conventional and high-speed turbine, ramjet, scramjet, and combined cycle engines; high temperature materials; thermal protection systems (TPS); and thermal management systems. The High Speed Systems Test (HSST) project addresses test technology needs including propulsion, aerodynamic and aerothermal testing, so the test community has the technology to support the required test scenarios for concepts under development in the S&T community. The technology developments within the HSST project align with the Department’s S&T priority investments. As such, the HSST project is developing, validating and transitioning advanced T&E technologies for ground test, open-air range flight test, and advanced computational tools, along with instrumentation and diagnostics systems for use in both ground tests and flight tests of high speed systems. The HSST project develops technologies to enable robust, accurate, and timely T&E of these future weapon systems. Department acquisition regulations require weapon systems to undergo a thorough T&E process to detect deficiencies early and to ensure system suitability and survivability. However, the extreme environments in which these weapons operate preclude accurate determination of their performance and operability with today’s T&E assets. Current national test capabilities have deficiencies in data accuracy, flight condition replication and simulation, test methods, productivity, modeling and simulation (M&S) fidelity, and range safety. The HSST mission is to address these national test capability gaps by providing test technology solutions that will enable high-speed and hypersonic weapon systems to be successfully developed through accurate, robust, and efficient T&E.

Hypersonic development remains a top priority for the Department. The Multi-Service Advanced Capability for Hypersonics Test Bed (MACH-TB) accelerates delivery of advanced hypersonic and strategic capabilities to the warfighter by leveraging commercial space launch and non-traditional test beds to provide the Department, other Federal agencies, industry, and academia the capability to affordably and rapidly conduct hypersonic experiments and test hypersonic system components.

The Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence (C4I) and Software Intensive Systems (SIS) Test (C4T) project addresses test technology for next generation resilient, survivable, federated networks and information systems (information superiority) from the tactical level up to strategic planning. The technology development efforts within the C4T project have been prioritized to align with the Department’s guidance of S&T Communities of Interest (CoIs) and the National Defense Strategy. Gaps are driven by more complex warfare environments and distributed systems; large quantities of data and intelligence (e.g., Big Data, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Machine Learning Algorithms (MLA)); and more software intensive systems (e.g. F-35, CVN, IBCS)). C4T addresses gaps in Big Data Analytics technologies to gain knowledge from massive amounts of structured and unstructured data collected over a single test, but also expanded to look at the systems’ performance over the acquisition lifecycle. The technologies are required when testing sensor platforms, command and control systems and weapon platforms that support the kill chain in a Joint multi-domain operation. These systems must be evaluated for their ability to provide the accurate, timely transfer of data (e.g., target tracks, weapons allocation, mission tasking, and situational awareness) as the data passes among the Services, Warfighting Domains, and Coalition Partners. C4T also addresses gaps in Live and Simulated Environments, these technologies are required to increase the use of a distributed test environment for new warfare concepts leveraging simulated entities (e.g. modeling and simulation) for more thorough joint mission context platform T&E (e.g., Anti-Access Arial Denial (A2AD) and Manned and Unmanned Systems (MUM-T)). The technologies within C4T will remove undesired distributed testing biases while improving test agility and the tester’s ability to effectively support knowledge management, rapid analysis of “Big Data," and automated test reporting. The C4T project advances these test technologies as well as Big Data collection, analysis, and visualization that enable the virtual integration of Department weapon laboratories and open-air ranges.

In order to establish dominance in the modern battlespace, our offensive and defensive electronic warfare systems must be capable against advanced radio frequency (RF) directed threats and electro-optic (EO) guided threats, which include infrared (IR) guidance. Ensured dominance in these areas requires more robust test and evaluation (T&E) with technologies that are rapidly adaptable to changing threats. Readily available, IR seeking, man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) are difficult to detect and pose an imminent and lethal threat to military aircraft of all types. Our ability to counter such threats is essential to owning the battlespace in theater. Therefore, the ability to test missile warning systems (MWS), hostile fire indicator (HFI) systems, IR countermeasures (IRCM), and advanced threat sensors is critical to our national defense. Additionally, a new generation of enemy RF missile seekers is both currently fielded and in further development, requiring a correspondingly new generation of test technologies to test the latest countermeasures. The T&E community is required to test IRCM and RF countermeasure systems in a repeatable manner with ground-truth data before and after integration into warfighting systems. Without new test technologies, the Department will be unable to perform adequate T&E of advanced warning and countermeasure systems. The Electronic Warfare Electronic attack and Electronic protect (EP) community is developing jammers and EP measures that are more sophisticated and take advantage of newer technology that allows adaptive waveforms and artificial intelligence and autonomy to respond to threats more rapidly and robustly. In addition, the testing of these systems in realistic many on many environments that are more threat representative requires new technology investment. The technology development efforts within the Electronic Warfare Test (EWT) project have been prioritized to align with the Department’s guidance on science and technology priority investments. As such, the EWT project is focusing on the test needs in both the EO, including IR, and the RF threat domains. Additionally, development of core test technologies in this area can be leveraged to meet other EO and RF test requirements, such as in fire control systems; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors, and weapon seekers.

The Advanced Instrumentation Systems Technology (AIST) project addresses the test technology gaps resulting from emerging weapon systems that need to be assessed at the Department’s installed systems test facility and hardware-in-the-loop testing (ISTF/HITL) and open-air range test facilities (including tropospheric, land-based, open-ocean, and undersea ranges). Instrumentation requirements for systems under test are increasing exponentially for new weapons systems. System-borne, warfighter-wearable, and remote sensing instrumentation packages are required. This instrumentation is for sensing and collecting critical performance data; determining accurate time, space, position information (TSPI) and attitude information; interfacing with command and control data links; monitoring and reporting system-wide communications; recording human operator physical and cognitive performance; and storing and transmitting data. The technology development efforts within the AIST project have been prioritized to align with the Department’s guidance on science and technology (S&T) communities of interest (COIs). The AIST project is focused on developing technologies for advanced TSPI instrumentation (especially with limited or no availability of Global Positioning System (GPS)), advanced sensors, advanced energy and power systems for instrumentation, micro-electronics, mitigating range encroachment issues, and measuring warfighter physical and cognitive performance. The AIST project addresses requirements for miniaturized, non-intrusive instrumentation suites with increased survivability in harsh environments. Such instrumentation is an urgent need because minimal space is available to add instrumentation to new or existing weapon systems subsequent to their development; furthermore, additional weight and power needs for instrumentation can adversely affect weapon system signature and performance. Instrumentation for humans-in-the-loop, especially dismounted warfighters, must not adversely affect performance, induce artificiality in the test environment, or create any operational burdens. New technologies can be exploited to integrate small, non-intrusive instrumentation (micro-technology) into emerging platforms during design and development, and, in some cases, into existing platforms.

The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) brings a host of revolutionary capabilities that will profoundly influence warfare, and bring special challenges for testers of Artificial Intelligence systems. The Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Test (AAIT) project addresses current and emerging challenges associated with the test and evaluation (T&E) of unmanned systems, particularly in testing autonomy, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. As such, AAIT is developing test technologies to simulate, stimulate, instrument, measure, and assess an autonomous system’s ability to perceive its environment, process information, adapt to dynamic conditions, make decisions, and effectively act on those decisions in the context of mission execution. AAIT will provide the test technologies to effectively measure performance and characterize risk, thereby increasing warfighter trust in autonomous systems and artificial intelligence tools. This program will improve the Department’s test capabilities and methodologies to address the testing of increasingly autonomous units operating in unstructured, dynamic, battlespace environments. Furthermore, advancements are being made in developing collaborating, system-of-autonomous-systems that will work in concert as a swarm or pack, and in close proximity with humans. New test technologies are needed to stress the collective set of autonomous systems under realistic conditions, predict emergent behavior of autonomous systems, emulate the complex environment, and assess mission performance of these highly coupled and artificially intelligent systems.

The Department’s ability to use cyberspace for rapid communication and information sharing in support of operations is a critical enabler of military missions. Advancements in utilizing cyberspace are outpacing the technologies needed for test and evaluation (T&E). The Cyberspace Test Technology (CTT) project develops advanced technologies and methodologies to test and evaluate the Department’s capabilities and information networks to defend and conduct full-spectrum military operations across cyberspace. This program will improve cyberspace T&E capabilities to support the continual experimental, contractor, developmental, operational, and live-fire testing requirements of warfighter systems operating in cyberspace. Many of the test tools and infrastructure items required for systems in cyberspace will require advancement and maturation of nascent test technologies. The CTT project will address test technology shortfalls in cyberspace testing, including planning cyberspace tests, creating representative cyberspace threats and test environments, executing cyberspace tests, and performing cyberspace test analysis and evaluation.

The Nuclear Test (NT) project mission addresses national test capability gaps by providing accurate, robust, and efficient T&E solutions to successfully develop, validate, and inform the employment of a modernized nuclear enterprise. The Department is prioritizing investments to modernize the nuclear enterprise while sustaining and increasing the resiliency of legacy systems. Current developments focus on deploying capabilities and systems to validate new designs and new materials in a complex threat-representative environment. Current testing infrastructure and methodologies to assess nuclear enterprise systems and microelectronics resilience against emerging threats is limited. Many test capabilities used in the past for acquisition are no longer available, either stopped by policy decisions or dismantled for cost savings. The NT project addresses test technology needs for adequate assessment of nuclear enterprise resiliency and aligns with the Department’s S&T priority investments. The NT project is supporting the development of a strategic roadmap and investment strategy to establish nuclear test environments for microelectronics, ground test environments for system level testing, and flight test range enhancements for end-to-end testing needs. The NT project develops technologies to enable robust, accurate, and timely T&E of a modernized nuclear enterprise, and to ensure system suitability and survivability.