CONDUIT
READY FOR TAKE-OFF?
Serapis SSE projects work in tandem to help get next-generation aviation concepts off the ground
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
Like all good stories, that of Serapis SSE is coming to an end and Conduit – the newsletter that has relayed many a tale of science and technology triumph – is also approaching its closing chapter.
Time certainly does fly and, with Lot 5 –alongside the wider framework – now well into its sixth and final year, the community of practice (COP) can reflect with some considerable pride at creating research ripples that will reach well into the future.
Science and technology are rarely pedestrian, and the fields of simulation and synthetic environments have, in keeping,
progressed at speed during the lifetime of the programme and this publication.
Keeping pace with these advancements, and horizon scanning for next-generation innovations that can enhance the wellbeing of those in Defence tomorrow, has proved a significant challenge – not least because the ‘present’ has been characterised by near constant change.
Consider the world of 2019 with that of 2025. On a superficial level, for example, I’d bet most of you reading this will almost certainly not still be using the same smartphone or laptop that you were six
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years ago. Things – from pandemics, prime ministers and US presidents to landlines, standalone GPS devices and Gavin and Stacey – have moved on.
More crucially, global security is not as secure as it was at the end of the last decade. Since the advent of Serapis SSE, massed war has returned to the European Continent and seen attritional trench warfare juxtaposed by smart missiles and swarms of drones; and Gaza has been reduced to near rubble by fierce fighting in the epitome of combat in a congested and contested environment.
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Such change has rightly sparked a rethink and refocusing of Defence priorities, and this has clearly been a contributor to the recent hiatus in the number of new tasks being presented to the community of practice. There is no denying that suppliers have experienced a degree of austerity as the ‘ask’ is redefined, but work has not ground to a halt. Several long-term taskings, some of which feature in the pages that follow, have endured the pause and will leave our Armed Forces better prepared for the complexities of modern conflict. This delivery of ground-breaking science and technology will not expire with Serapis SSE. Such is the value of the research that
CONSIDER THE WORLD OF 2019 WITH THAT OF 2025. THINGS – FROM PANDEMICS, PRIME MINISTERS AND US PRESIDENTS TO LANDLINES, STANDALONE GPS DEVICES AND GAVIN AND STACEY –HAVE MOVED ON
Blast
Dstl have agreed to a ‘sunset’ period for any tasks on contract at the end of the framework and we are working hard to identify and set in motion suitable projects before the commercial end date.
Importantly, our community capability is going nowhere. In 2019 we assumed responsibility for the Synthetic Environments COP and, by the time Serapis SSE finishes, we will have built a stronger and more diverse ‘family’ of organisations. Dstl is designing what comes next and we are feeding our shared lessons into that process to ensure that what follows delivers. With that sharing of knowledge in mind, please continue to use us as a conduit (pun
intended) for any feedback so that we can include your thoughts (whether you are a casual reader, demander or customer) in our final framework report.
We are particularly interested in hearing how Serapis SSE’s endeavours are being exploited across other Ministry of Defence programmes.
Please don’t be shy – shouting about the impact of science and technology has never been so important.
Conduit will be back, for one final hurrah, to do just that. Until then, enjoy the penultimate issue. – Steve Yates, Serapis SSE Programme Director (QinetiQ Training & Simulation)
from the past: The first issue of Conduit was released in spring 2020.
Steve Yates QinetiQ Training & Simulation
Connecting the digital dots: Serapis SSE community helps to sharpen Defence’s cyber sabre
Words: Andy Simms, TylerBale
HACKING THE HEADACHE
While the rapid rise in use of weaponised drones has featured heavily in reporting of the Russia-Ukraine war, Vladimir Putin’s “special operation” has also evidenced that debilitating blows to military assets and supporting organisations and infrastructure can not only be delivered from the skies.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have deployed digital arsenals in an attempt to seek an advantage in the attritional battles being fought by conventional forces,
with cyber-attacks – launched by state-sponsored hackers and civilian hacktivist groups – a constant of the conflict raging on the European continent.
Open sources suggest the IT Army of Ukraine, for example, is a voluntary unit comprising tens of thousands of anonymous, geographically dispersed cyber operators that has inflicted hundreds of millions worth of losses on the Russian economy, while pro-Russian group Killnet has been a persistent source of
low-level disruptive attacks on Ukrainian institutions.
Such is the scale of the virtual activity that the International Committee of the Red Cross has restated the legal obligations that apply to those participating in armed conflicts “through digital means”. These rules of engagement prohibit attacks that affect civilians but highlight the legitimacy of military computerised capabilities as targets – underlining the need for the UK’s battlefield toolbox
to include the means to defend its cyber systems.
Fortunately, recognising cyber warfare is now a very real component of modern conflict is not lost on the tech-savvy minds at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), who, through the Serapis framework, have mobilised innovators from across industry to explore how representations and simulations of cyber effects can be used to support joint and collective training, and, in turn, inform how the Ministry of Defence might more effectively exercise defensive cyber operations.
Plugging into Dstl’s Cyber Security and Future Workforce and Training Programmes, the research conducted to date has been truly cross-cutting and befittingly commenced with a joint call-to-arms to three of Serapis’ communities of practice (Lots 4, 5 and 6; led by QinetiQ, QinetiQ Training & Simulation and Frazer-Nash respectively).
More than 40 suppliers responded with potential approaches to bolstering digital defences, with the majority
invited to pitch their cyber concepts to stakeholders during a three-day Dragons’ Den style event, during which 14 bright ideas were down-selected for funding.
Among the gems green lighted through Serapis SSE were the development of a mechanism to invoke a cyber-attack based on real-world observed incidents using an adversary emulation framework (MITRE Caldera), which was delivered by Montvieux; a task aimed at enabling the integration of cyber effects into multi-domain defence training by leveraging the capability of Riskaware’s CyberAware Resilience platform to model the effects of events on mission success; and an investigation and demonstration – spearheaded by Pitch Technologies – of the capabilities of the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organisation (SISO) Cyber Data Exchange Model (DEM) to simulate and represent cyberattacks on an open standardsbased system architecture.
Further work has since been undertaken to connect these digital dots to create
BOTH MOSCOW AND KYIV HAVE DEPLOYED DIGITAL ARSENALS IN AN ATTEMPT TO SEEK AN ADVANTAGE IN THE ATTRITIONAL BATTLES BEING FOUGHT BY CONVENTIONAL FORCES, WITH CYBER-ATTACKS – LAUNCHED BY STATE-SPONSORED HACKERS AND CIVILIAN HACKTIVIST GROUPS – A CONSTANT OF THE CONFLICT RAGING ON THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT
a Cyber Effects Testbed to showcase the ability to feature cyber injects in a distributed simulation environment. Combining the expertise and systems of multiple suppliers, the demonstrator adopted an interoperability architecture that presented a system coming
under attack from hostile actors, with the effects shown in a physical domain.
“For those with expertise in cyber security, the sharing of any sort of data can feel counter-intuitive, but that absolutely has not been our experience in working with Dstl and a diverse group of suppliers to investigate potential areas of exploitation,” Shilpi Walker, a project manager at QinetiQ Training & Simulation, told Conduit. “The research called for a coming together for the greater good and that’s what happened.
“It was a truly collaborative process and saw a multicompany team contributing to regular remote design, development and integration sessions.”
This team effort has presented Dstl with a series of recommendations for the future development of a Cyber Effects Testbed, which are intended to inform decisions on how Defence can train to protect its systems and Service personnel from an ever-evolving threat.
The number of active cyber actors intent on influencing military operations internationally may be growing exponentially, but thanks to Serapis SSE’s own army of digital defenders – drawn from industry and academia – the UK’s Armed Forces are set to be better prepared for operating in the digital battlespace of the future.
PRIME TIME PROTOTYPE
Non-traditional defence supplier impresses in lead Serapis SSE
role
Words: Andy Simms, TylerBale
Whether driving people to dab their eyes dry through the deployment of drama, shout out answers to quiz questions or cower behind a cushion at the appearance of a Cyberman, those working in the television industry are well-practised in the art of engaging and retaining the attention of audiences.
Even in educational settings – for so long the preserve of overhead projectors and acetate sheets – their medium has excelled, enlivening school lessons, university lectures and workplace instruction courses with captivating curriculumsupporting clips.
The creative touch of TV writers, producers and directors has, however, largely evaded the realm of Defence… until now.
Investigating if a little more of the magic behind hit shows such as Death in Paradise (as opposed to a reliance on ‘death by PowerPoint’) can enrich the
wider Armed Forces community has been a key element of a recently completed Serapis SSE task exploring the merits of transmedia experiential learning – learning by doing then reflecting using information delivered across a range of devices.
Part of Dstl’s Future Workforce and Training Programme, which has been devised to bring together the cross-cutting science and technology which will enable pan-Defence users to understand and develop robust approaches to achieving superiority through its people capability, the work has been spearheaded by a company familiar with delivering quality content for the small screen.
Limetools – a non-traditional defence supplier enlisted by task lead QinetiQ Training & Simulation – is certainly not short of meaningful credits.
The firm’s executive director of products and services John
Dale is a BAFTA winner who has held senior creative and managerial roles with both the BBC and ITV, and his team includes producers with Royal Television Society awards to their name. In a deliberate effort not to be typecast as simply broadcast storytellers, Limetools also boasts a mix of behavioural psychologists, learning planners, game developers, UX designers and data analysts.
“Our background is in feature film and television, but we have curated an interesting combination of skill sets,” John told Conduit, explaining his eclectic ensemble and professional shift in focus from appointment-to-view TV to appointment-to-participate training.
“For some years Limetools has been exploiting how storytelling can support people whose jobs may require them to make decisions under pressure
by putting them into an environment in which it is safe to take risks.
“The storytelling element is important because it enables immersion into a credible and realistic scenario and to do this we use transmedia.
“The use of different devices allows a story to be granulated out – for example, a character you have been reading about on a website or watching on a news report could ring you on a mobile or send you a text.”
With such an approach seen by Dstl as a potentially powerful way of bridging the gap between knowledge in theory and action in practice, and a means of progressing people’s understanding of complexity in soft skills such as teamwork, leadership, initiative and intuitive decision making, Limetools delivered a pilot proof of concept.
“We created a fake world based on a fictional postcolonial island in the Tropics called Sentient,” said John, explaining how the laptopbased training testbed allowed for six players, co-located
for the purpose of social interaction, to flex their skills in the face of an information overload.
“There are British interests on the island and, with the threat of a civil war off its coast, participants in the training can face scenarios such as arranging an evacuation of noncombatants or making decisions on potential intervention and support.
“Bringing Sentient to life are around 25 fictional websites;
a TV channel with fake news outputs, breaking updates and interviews with key players; and a whole host of databases that can be used to assess things like the island’s road systems, traffic levels and demographics.”
Limetools’ prototype exercise tool was developed to evaluate the value of the approach, delivery and scalability, data capture and interpretation benefits, and design lessons learnt, and – in keeping with John’s broadcasting past –
received rave reviews.
‘Visits’ to the eponymous island showed that high levels of engagement are achieved quickly, resulting in undistracted, active commitment to the exercise and, as a result, a newly created Ministry of Defenceowned demonstrator is due to further test the effectiveness of transmedia training during 2025.
“It is exciting to know that Defence is beginning to look at things to supplement wargaming and that there is a renewed focus on soft skills and how best to develop them,” concluded John, the creator of hit children’s TV show No. 73, which ran for 189 episodes and was broadcast live on Saturday mornings from 1982 to 1988.
“Sentient has shown that it is not always necessary to get everyone to travel to a classroom or a lecture theatre for training. Instead you can deliver a scenario on demand for up to 20 people and conduct meaningful learning over the course of just five to six hours.”
SKY-HIGH JOB SATISFACTION
Former fast-jet pilot revels in Serapis SSE’s support of innovative approach to landing next-gen technologies
Words: Andy Simms, TylerBale
For Tom Ball there is very little that is novel about using simulation and synthetic environments to enhance live military training.
As a Royal Air Force Tornado GR4 pilot, he spent hundreds of hours in simulators and computer-driven cockpits on terra firma before getting to fire the afterburners of one the UK Armed Forces’ most potent strike attack weapon systems in anger. And having hung up his aircrew coveralls after 14 years of service that included three operational tours of Iraq, he landed on a second career working as a consultant for Battlespace Simulations Inc
(BSI) – a company with nearly two decades of experience of providing true-to-life virtual environments to international commands. However, the former fast-jet pilot’s first-hand familiarity with exploiting ‘digital deployments’ to better prepare military personnel for the realities of warfare has not
prevented him from marvelling at the innovation and skyhigh value of the approach to expediting the pull-through of battle-winning technologies being taken by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory-led Tactical Aviation CDO [Contested, Degraded and Operationally limiting environments] project.
“For pilots, simulation can seem like bread and butter stuff, but what the Tactical Aviation CDO team is doing is hugely rewarding to be a part of,” Tom told Conduit while outlining how members of Serapis SSE’s community of practice were providing
Picture: UK MOD Crown Copyright
extra ‘lift’ to the Integrating Capability Challenge’s efforts to test if bright ideas volunteered by Government departments, industry and academia have the potential to take flight and boost the future fortunes of the UK’s fleet of military aircraft.
“Being able to see concepts that could possibly be warwinning or that could give our people a competitive edge and being able to test them in a very thorough way before even getting to live trials, and seeing the development of tactics, techniques and procedures before anyone has even sat in a real cockpit, is incredibly satisfying.”
BSI are among a number of Serapis SSE suppliers, curated by Lot lead QinetiQ Training & Simulation, to have supported Tactical Aviation CDO over the past year and have played a key role in refining the project’s Common
BEING ABLE TO SEE CONCEPTS THAT COULD POSSIBLY BE WAR-WINNING AND BEING ABLE TO TEST THEM IN A VERY THOROUGH WAY BEFORE ANYONE HAS EVEN SAT IN A REAL COCKPIT IS INCREDIBLY SATISFYING
Tom Ball Consultant, Battlespace Simulations Inc
Simulation Environment – a suite of synthetic systems and networked simulators – that provides a rapid approach to analysis and serves as a potential runway to procuring platform and operator technologies.
Programmers from the simulation specialist have adapted elements of BSI’s MACE [Modern Air Combat Environment] and ARMOR [Augmented Reality Mission Observation and Rehearsal, pictured above] software, and developed a range of bespoke plug-ins, to enhance the fidelity of the project’s QinetiQ Training & Simulation and Inzpire-developed helicopter simulator rigs.
“MACE is used as a scenario generator and powers the flight physics and electromagnetic warfare elements while ARMOR provides the outside visuals – through a mixed reality
headset – and sensor displays,” explained Tom. “Some of the bespoke work we’ve done includes the creation of a plugin that feeds flight dynamics to the rigs’ motion platforms, which help mitigate VR sickness using physical cues; and the synchronisation of sensor feeds between networked cockpits, which allows either the pilot or gunner to take control of designating targets and firing.”
Most recently, BSI worked in close collaboration with Dstl, QinetiQ Training & Simulation and Anduril to enable a concept capability demonstrator of helicopter-launched autonomous collaborative platforms. The Anduril Lattice software launches, controls flight and activates payloads on simulated Altius drones within MACE; the drones transmit friendly and target tracks to the multi-function displays in the cockpit rigs where the aircrew
can engage them beyond the line of sight.
Serapis SSE’s engagement with Tactical Aviation CDO has also included adding the British Army’s ‘Virtual Proving Ground’ (VPG) to the project’s analysis and assurance arsenal. The virtual experimentation capability, which is sponsored by Army HQ’s Futures Directorate, managed by the land systems programme within Dstl and also delivered by Serapis SSE, uses a state-of-theart synthetic environment to stage bespoke human-centric experiments and gather verified and validated evidence to demonstrate the viability of everything from novel weapons systems and disruptive doctrine to prototype platforms.
VPG is run on a network of high-spec computers that can be set up at the point of need, scaled to host section- to companysized events, and removes
can be reset, repeated and reconfigured quickly; experiments run without the significant costs involved in deploying people and systems to real-world training areas; and concepts explored without
putting personnel or equipment in harm’s way – a benefit of value to industry partners fielding one-off prototypes or assets designed to go ‘bang’. The identification of links and subsequent interaction between
two Serapis SSE initiatives represents a significant coup for the framework.
Liam Ball, Project Technical Authority for the Tactical Aviation CDO project, said VPG complemented the aims of the four-year task, which is seeking solutions to combat future challenges, such as the increased use of unmanned and autonomous vehicles, mitigating the risks presented by tactical surface-to-air missiles and the cyber and electronic warfare capabilities of adversaries.
“Alongside our Aviation Concepts Environment and Common Simulation Environment, VPG will help us to address Front Line Command-identified challenges and capability gaps for tactical aircraft,” he explained. “It can be plugged into our own simulation rigs and configured to rapidly stress test engineering, logistical and platform ‘bright ideas’ and provide hard data on which future decisions can be made.”
Commending the network of partnerships created by Serapis SSE to foster collaboration and cross-cutting coherence, Tom Ball concluded: “It is a great group to work with; the Tactical Aviation CDO team are focused on getting things done for the benefit and wellbeing of the end users and that resonates with us at BSI. We are mostly end users ourselves, with about 40 per cent of the company being ex-military personnel, and this work allows us to connect at a very close level and help those serving today.
Seeing how computer modelling is helping to give the UK and its allies an operational advantage has a real impact.”
Picture: UK MOD Crown Copyright
Picture: UK MOD Crown Copyright
SEAWORTHY SCIENCE
Work completed by a crew of software-savvy specialists – drawn from a sea of Serapis SSE suppliers – will help to ensure that only watertight innovations are introduced to the Royal Navy’s fleet of ships and submarines.
On-boarded by QinetiQ Training & Simulation, the technical team from Sonalysts and Atlas were immersed in the challenge of refining a range of computer models being used by Dstl’s Maritime Experimentation Lab at Portsdown West in Hampshire to test the ‘buoyancy’ of aboveand underwater concepts, new technologies and ways of working.
The nautical numbercrunching included the repurposing of several existing simulators and the creation of bespoke plug-ins to emulate data feeds from, for example,
periscope optronics and helicopter-dipped sonars.
Serapis SSE’s toe in the water will better enable the Maritime Experimentation Lab to both fast-track the technology readiness levels of potential war-winning capabilities and quickly torpedo any flawed ideas that have been floated, according to Chris Parnell, a senior principal scientist at Dstl.
“We are trying to take the science and technology we are exploring and mature it as fast as possible,” the former submariner told Conduit “Historically, we would put a capability on a ship, send it to sea, learn from that and then make any modifications or tweaks necessary before sending it back out to sea. However, that is no longer the situation and there is a huge shortfall in testing capabilities by virtue of there being fewer
ships and submarines than there used to be and those we have being very, very busy.
“Experimenting in a simulated environment is the next best thing as it allows us to more quickly evaluate, raise technology readiness levels and advance concepts at scale. Similarly, valuable research can also entail failing fast –looking at a new technique, discovering it doesn’t work and then discounting it. Ruling out options in the lab, rather than at sea, saves everyone time, effort and money.
“Key within that is making sure we’ve got the right simulations to do the work required and Serapis SSE has allowed us to commission the development of new models and the modification of existing capabilities.”
Describing maritime operations as a team sport,
Chris stressed that the Lab’s embrace of computation for experimentation – and the endeavours of Serapis SSE suppliers – was for the benefit of those in uniform and intended to help them meet the high watermark demanded of personnel on operations.
“Technology might be the enabler, but a lot of our focus is on promoting team cohesion and shared situational awareness, and relates to human factors – the usability of displays and the timeliness and accuracy of information, for example – and measuring the evidence to see if a new capability improves or degrades a team.
“The majority in Defence realise that in the ‘next battle’ it is the people who make the best use of technology, rather than technology itself, that will come to the fore.”