ENGINEERED RESILIENT SYSTEMS

BY MARY MARGARET HALFORD, ERDC

To maintain military superiority, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) must have state-of-the-art weapon systems. But in today’s climate of shrinking budgets and uncertain conflicts, fielding adaptable weapons more quickly and inexpensively can be a challenge.

The Engineered Resilient Systems (ERS) program, headquartered at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Mississippi, is answering that call. With high-performance computing as a main ingredient, the ERS program is developing concepts, techniques, and tools that offer a deeper look into the design alternatives used by decision-makers to choose the next generation of weapon platforms. With the help of ERS, the alternatives are not only greater in number, but also more accurate and detailed, which allows for selections earlier in the acquisition process.

An AH-64 Apache helicopter with 1st Battalion, 3rd Aviation Regiment, 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, during a combined arms live-fire exercise in Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, March 28, 2018. Selection for the Army’s newest Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, or FARA, is underway and could replace about 50 percent of the Army’s aging Apache fleet.

U.S. Army Photo by Spc. Hubert O. Delany II

In October 2017, the Army announced six modernization priorities – an initiative to update its forces and equipment with improved capabilities. One of those priority areas is Future Vertical Lift, which aims to increase reach, protection, lethality, agility, and mission flexibility to dominate in a contested and complex airspace. As part of that initiative, the Army is exploring designs for a new Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA).

Earlier this year, the Army chose five vendors to develop plans for the future helicopter and issued mandatory design requirements and a list of other mandates. Researchers from ERDC’s Information Technology Laboratory who work with the ERS program in support of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center contributed to design optimization efforts for the FARA. They used advanced process automation and high-fidelity simulations to reduce the proposed performance time for simulations from weeks to days, a capability that will be used in the down-select process of the FARA.

Collaboration across the services is nothing new for ERS, as the program began in 2011 as a priority steering committee before becoming one of 17 DOD Reliance 21 Communities of Interest. The communities work to encourage collaboration across multiple agencies working in the same technology focus areas. During the early days, ERS leadership contacted DOD stakeholders to arrange demonstrations of ERS-related techniques and tools, leading to early success for the program.

In 2013, ERS was tested when the Naval Sea Systems Command was considering a new amphibious transport dock warship, known as the LX(R). Traditional methods for such a task called for point-based design, which originates with one existing design and modifying one component at a time until all the new criteria are met, but ERS introduced the idea of set-based design. The concept produces a list of all possible designs up front, and then narrows and sorts it down based on feasibility.

Similar previous studies examined between five and 20 potential designs, but the ERS approach allowed decision-makers to consider more than 22,000 designs in only three months. In another Navy project, ERS tools and techniques offered 3.6 million options based on 212 variables developed in less than a half-hour.

Since the early days when ERS introduced set-based design into the world of military acquisitions, the program has grown significantly and also partnered with industry and academia. The initiative aims to mature its high-fidelity physics capabilities and create mission-level simulations that allow decision makers to complement physical testing and evaluation to predict system performance.

And just like they were with the Army’s future attack helicopter, ERS researchers are committed to providing an integrated computational environment that supports high-fidelity physics and more detailed analytics earlier in the military acquisition process. As the global landscape of battle quickly changes, ERS tools, techniques, and personnel stand ready to assist decision-makers in strong resilient system selection to serve and protect the American warfighters.