The capability — dubbed “Swarm” — is in nascent development, but envisioned as a multi-classification digital environment where guardians from various units can come together against simulated adversaries. According to Maj. Gen. Timothy Sejba, head of the service’s Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM), early versions of Swarm were built for the Space Force’s primary mission planning and operational support exercise series known as Space Flag.

“The Space Flag that we just completed here about a month and a half ago, many of the threats that we faced were simulated in that environment,” Sejba said Thursday during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute. “You had crews from across the Space Force that were actually executing over a two-week period to understand how they would actually perform in the environment.”

Sejba noted that the environment is currently only available to STARCOM on-prem, and that the service is focused on delivering the “initial aspect of Swarm” by the end of 2025. At the same time, the Space Force is planning to move the capability to the cloud sometime in the next two years so it can scale the size and scope of its future training and test exercises, he added.

“We’re quickly building not only the red threats that we need to represent, but also all of the blue systems that are coming online over the next several years,” Sejba said. “Then we’re quickly moving it to the cloud so we can get to a distributed training capability that allows each of those guardian units to actually be able to [train] from their home stations, but do it over and over.”

That means guardians from multiple units in different locations can simultaneously train in the simulated environment and prepare for more complex threats, such as fighting against multiple adversaries at once, he noted. 

Swarm is part of the Space Force’s broader effort to modernize and build out its training infrastructure — a task that is both one of Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman’s top priorities and a significant challenge for the Pentagon’s newest service. The service’s flagship development program is the Operational Test and Training Infrastructure (OTTI), which seeks to combine digital, cyber and live-training ranges under one system.

Developing OTTI from scratch, however, has been a challenge. Sejba highlighted that while the other services have had decades to build their test and training infrastructures, the Space Force has only had a few years to do so.

STARCOM also recently divided the OTTI effort into two distinct paths, Sejba noted. One tackles the need for a distributed training capability that is being built out by Swarm, while the other focuses on developing a high-fidelity, realistic simulation environment — a system akin to the Air Force and Navy’s Joint Simulation Environment (JSE), which is used to train pilots for complex combat scenarios.

“Something like JSE is something that we will eventually need. I would argue we probably need it sooner rather than later so that we’ve got our own capability to do some of this high-end testing [and] training,” Sejba said. “When I explore something like JSE, in that kind of environment you can very quickly translate that to what that might look like for space and the kind of high-end training that you’d be able to do for guardians in the near future.”

Sejba acknowledged that a limited budget likely means it will be several years before STARCOM has a true JSE-like training environment, but the Space Force is in the meantime leveraging prior work done by the Air Force and Navy to develop the system.

“We know what it’s going to take to be able to adopt that environment,” he said. “We’ve done plenty of research to see if that’s the right environment for us to go forward with, and we certainly know what some of the other services need also from a space effects standpoint.”

The post Space Force developing new cloud-based digital environment for training appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Hosted at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the system is funded by DOD’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program, and officials plan to soon open it up for use by the military, other federal agencies, allied and partner governments, and key collaborators in academic and industry.

“The name of the system is CASSIE,” a Pentagon spokesperson told DefenseScoop this week.

They confirmed that the system was named in honor of a DOD employee, but the spokesperson could not immediately identify that official.

However, according to a recent post on LinkedIn, “the supercomputer is named CASSIE in honor of Ms. Cassandra Simmons-Brown, the Principal Director of the Office of the DASD for Chemical and Biological Defense, for her 22 years (and counting) of service across the CBDP Enterprise.”

The platform will build upon and lean on the same architecture as Lawrence Livermore’s in-the-making exascale supercomputer, El Capitan. That system is projected to be the world’s most powerful when it becomes operational in the near future.

Many details on CASSIE’s hardware and specifications have not yet been shared, but a press release from Lawrence Livermore stated the system is equipped with AMD’s MI300A processors.

In DOD’s press release, officials wrote that CASSIE is expected to deliver “unique capabilities for large-scale simulation and AI-based modeling for a variety of defensive activities, including bio-surveillance, threat characterization, advanced materials development, and accelerated medical countermeasures.”

The department is broadly responsible for integrating vast amounts of data from a range of sources to provide early warning of biological and chemical threats, like anthrax or nerve agents.

“CASSIE will significantly expand our ability to understand patterns in the raw data (including combinations of data from different sources) and turn them into high-fidelity actionable intelligence. In order words, not only detecting something is amiss but identifying and characterizing the threat and forecasting impact on potential mission,” the Pentagon spokesperson told DefenseScoop. 

“Early warning, identification, and characterization will provide the Joint Force with more defensive options and allow acquisition officials to rapidly develop and deliver medical countermeasures against novel threats,” they said.

When asked for a concrete example of what the new system offers to the Pentagon and its components, the official pointed to wearable technologies, such as smartwatches or rings that collect biomarkers, which they noted are “increasingly” worn by service members in recent years.

“DOD devised an algorithm that used wearable-collected biomarkers to alert to possible COVID-19 infection two days before symptoms appeared. Analyzing biomarker data with CASSIE will help us detect disease earlier and with greater precision, to include forecasting symptoms, intensity, duration, and transmissibility of various biothreats,” the spokesperson said. 

They also highlighted other applications for the new supercomputer.

“CASSIE will be used to identify, design, and test advanced materials that will create personal protective gear that is more comfortable for the warfighter to operate in, longer-lasting, more effective against threats, and environmentally friendly,” the spokesperson said.

Additionally, the system will enable DOD officials “to better design, manufacture, and understand the safety of medical countermeasures (MCMs), which will rapidly accelerate MCM development against novel threats and ensure they can be manufactured at scale,” they noted.

The Pentagon did not confirm the total cost for CASSIE or provide a timeline for when it will be fully operational. 

The post New DOD supercomputer designed to thwart chem and bio threats appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Gaming plays a critical role for the U.S. military. These efforts serve as “laboratories” for decision-making, analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted in commentary published in February.

“From the interwar period and Cold War to contemporary debates about countering Russia and China, wargames have been a staple of strategic analysis in the United States. These simulation-driven exercises evaluate theories, assumptions, and strategies related to warfare through the development of hypothetical conflict scenarios. As a result, wargames serve multiple purposes within policy circles. They facilitate dialogue across agencies and among stakeholders, fostering an environment where new ideas can emerge and analysts can evaluate key assumptions,” they wrote.

However, the old-school way of doing them can also be expensive and comes with analytic shortfalls, they noted.

The authors and other observers, including a key Air Force leader, think artificial intelligence can significantly improve the enterprise.

The Air Force Futures office at the Pentagon is responsible for using wargaming and workshops for developing strategy and concepts, integrated force design and conducting assessments of the operating environment, among other tasks.

“I literally just got back from MIT’s AI Accelerator just earlier this week, looking at where they’re helping Air Force Futures out … into using artificial intelligence,” Lt. Gen. David Harris, deputy chief of staff of Air Force Futures, said Friday during a virtual event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“The first place that we’re looking at it is within our wargaming methodology. And that is being able to have thousands of runs using either an automated assistant or using somebody with a knowledge assistant, [or] even something as simple as rapid adjudication in some of these games, so instead of just getting three turns against an adversary, I can run thousands of iterations in one turn to understand what some of the optimal solutions are of, hey, maybe if you place your force up into the northern sector versus the southern, it created a different opportunity. And understanding some of that trade space is, I think, where AI is going to be able to help us out a lot,” he said.

Harris plays a key role at Air Force headquarters as a senior leader responsible for strategy, integration and requirements.

He noted that the service is exploring the idea of quickly adjusting levels of autonomy for future systems on the battlefield, depending on the circumstances.

The Air Force is pursuing next-generation drones known as collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), that will be equipped with algorithms and other capabilities. Officials envision CCAs operating as robotic wingmen to manned planes — with each crewed fighter jet overseeing several drones and playing a quarterback type of role — or conducting operations independently in an “untethered” fashion.

“There is another piece of the visit that we did up at MIT. And there’s an interesting connection here between humans operating aircraft, and then just being fully autonomous. There’s a piece in the middle with the human-machine teaming piece of this. And this speaks to a point where when we start looking at, hey, if a pilot is flying with unmanned aircraft around it, what is the connection between those two? As the pilot begins to fatigue after a long flight, can we recognize this and then have that [drone] platform go more into an autonomous mode, versus — hey, the pilot is at peak performance and now I can probably control and maneuver these a bit more? That intersection is an area that’s being explored. And I think it’s an important one as relates to the force design and where we go,” Harris said.

The post Air Force sees opportunities for AI to improve wargaming appeared first on DefenseScoop.

“CAVE is our modeling and simulation laboratory which enables us to perform analysis on warfighting, on plans [and] on campaigning,” Spacecom Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting said Tuesday during his keynote at the annual Space Symposium. “We’ll use that to derive better ways of deterring and planning to conduct operations for a war that’s never happened, and a war we don’t want to happen.”

The platform recently achieved minimum viable capability at the combatant command’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, Whiting told DefenseScoop during a media roundtable following his speech.

“CAVE is really an office, if you will,” he said. “It’s both a modeling and simulation platform, but it’s also the modeling and simulation experts and analytics experts who can help us model our warfighting plans, our operations and our campaigning.”

As space continues to gain significance as a warfighting domain, both Space Command and the Space Force have highlighted the need for accurate modeling and simulation capabilities that can accurately replicate the space environment — particularly for training guardians and conducting wargames.

Separately from Spacecom’s CAVE, the Space Force is developing its own digital engineering ecosystem platform known as SpaceDEN. The tool will allow the service “to identify capability gaps, performance requirements and acquisition strategies to meet emerging threats,” according to the military branch.

CAVE, on the other hand, appears to be tailored more towards the operational needs of Spacecom. Along with conducting wargames for operations in space, Whiting said the platform will be used to understand Spacecom’s requirements and how space will fit into future joint warfighting scenarios across all domains.

“At fully operational capability, we’ll be able to assess all of our operations at all classification levels,” Whiting said. “Today, we can do a subset of that, and it’s an important subset, but we still need to grow that. But I think we’re on a good path.”

The command doesn’t have a defined timeline for when it wants to see CAVE reach FOC, he said, but it plans to continue building out the platform beyond minimum viable capability throughout 2024.

The post Space Command stands up new simulated environment for wargaming appeared first on DefenseScoop.

During the Google Defense Forum presented by DefenseScoop on Jan. 25, Deputy Chief Sustainability Officer and Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment Rachel Ross, and Senior Advisor to the Navy’s Climate Change Secretary Deborah Loomis spotlighted some of the ways their teams aim to address those pressing weather and structural challenges.

“We can’t appropriate our way out of the problem. The backlog of maintenance is close to $150 billion. So, we definitely need to work with our industry partners for joint investments. Data is a huge, huge opportunity. We have been an unsophisticated customer, to be kind. So looking at ways to automate and streamline — for example, our utility bills — to be able to understand what our electricity use is and where. So, we went from using year-old data to now having real-time, 15-minute interval data for almost 40% of our footprint,” Ross said. 

The Navy is also working to apply data-based modeling and simulations to inform infrastructure-related decision-making — particularly through the new multibillion dollar Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program.

“I’m told it’s one of the largest modeling-and-simulation efforts ever undertaken, because we are literally looking at how you’d totally modernize all of the operations of a shipyard,” Loomis explained.

Because bases and installations can often rely on decades-old water systems, these simulations don’t just look into the shipyards themselves — but also deep into other components across their maintenance enterprise, to include depots and other facilities. 

“Naval Station Norfolk loses power about 100 times a year, which is really shocking. And that’s just not sustainable. So we are investing a lot into kind of shoring up those really critical infrastructure systems,” Loomis said.

She and Ross acknowledged how most military installations can be thought of as standalone “mini-cities.” However, they noted that the Navy is working to collaborate with local towns regarding the procurement of energy and municipal services that are essential to bases near them.

“We view the installations and the communities around them as sort of one living organism. It’s hard to separate them out — 70% of the service members actually live off base, as you know — so being able to address these issues together with the community is very important. We have grant programs and other ways to incentivize more partnership and to be able to infuse resources where they’re needed,” Ross said.

The Navy is also revamping and enhancing its existing cooperation with local utilities. 

“We’re partnering with the Edison Electric Institute and their members that are working to offer services and incentives to the local installations when it comes to having efficiency measures or third-party financing for integrated upgrades that we need to install at these locations — where we can’t fund it ourselves, but maybe the utility partner can,” Ross noted.

She and Loomis spotlighted a recent “microgrids” use case on the West Coast. Officials at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, for a while now, have been working to “island” their capabilities and come off of the San Diego area’s electric grid, as needed.

“They do this routinely so that when South-Southern California is experiencing a brownout — or to avoid a brownout — we’ll come on to our microgrid so that the lights can stay on at about 3,000 homes in the community that otherwise might have been subjected to that brownout,” Loomis said.

“We do the same thing on our ships. When we have heat waves, again, in San Diego, about 10 ships a day will come onto their own ships’ power to take that load off of the grid. Now, that’s a good news story and not a good news story, because that’s not optimally how you want to run a ship and port. You want to be attached to shore power. So, we’re also looking really hard at how we integrate those operational and shore energy needs and how we get battery backup power on that pier,” she added.

During the panel, the senior officials also provided some feedback to their industry partners regarding new capabilities they’re on the lookout for.

“I get pitched a lot of tools and people come to me and say, ‘Oh, I can show you where you’re going to be exposed to sea level rise,’ or whatever. And I’m like, ‘That’s great. Can you also show me adaptive capacity? Can we model out if I do this — if I change out this asphalt with native grass — what’s that going to do to my adaptive capacity, or nothing at all?’ So, I think those tools of showing me risk and exposure are great. And please help me see solution sets,” Loomis said.

The post Navy taps data, microgrids to modernize and innovate against climate change appeared first on DefenseScoop.

CTIO Lisa Costa recently saw a draft of the service’s digital modeling strategy, which was developed in conjunction with the Space Force’s field commanders, direct reporting units and other personnel across the Department of Defense. Costa emphasized that the document aims to standardize and streamline how the Pentagon’s newest and most digitally focused service uses modeling and simulation techniques throughout its enterprise.

“We are getting after standards for digital twins,” she said during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute. “You would think with the use of digital twins by very large sectors of different industries, that there would be commercial standards out there. But they’re not. They’re very bespoke.”

Digital twins use real-world data — including both physical and behavioral characteristics — to create a true-to-reality, simulated copy of an environment, object or person. Different variables of the model can be altered to study new capabilities, run “what-if” scenarios or predict future operational outcomes.

The technology has been critical for a number of Defense Department programs — including the development of the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, upgrades to the Navy’s aging shipyards and the Pentagon-wide Joint All-Domain Command and Control initiative.

The Space Force has been on a journey to build up its operational test and training environments for guardians that will also validate the service’s tactics. It requested $340 million from Congress for fiscal 2024 to enhance its training infrastructure with better simulators, improved ranges and other digital capabilities.

But Costa said the service’s new digital modeling strategy is working to achieve an open standard so that the same digital model can move with a concept or capability all the way through the development pipeline — not just for training purposes.

That could look like a digital twin concept being developed through work done by the Space Warfighting Analysis Center (SWAC) — the Space Force organization responsible for creating operational concepts and force design guidance — and then moving to the service’s acquisition officials to help with requirements and costs analysis. That model could also follow the capability into the operational environment, she added.

“That same model, with more fidelity as it goes through this pipeline, is then able to be used for test, training, [tactics, techniques, and procedures] development, etc.,” Costa said. “In other words, what I always say is we don’t want a test pipeline and then a training pipeline — all of it is the same pipeline.”

When asked if it would be possible for commanders to one day be able to run those models in the background during conflict in order to help make decisions in real time, Costa suggested there could be opportunities.

“You could actually think about having a switch where I’m in simulation mode one moment and then operational mode in the next,” she said.

Updated on Nov. 9, 2023 at 10:50 AM: A previous version of this story stated that Space Force CTIO Lisa Costa had already signed off on a new digital modernization strategy. After publication, a Department of the Air Force spokesperson told DefenseScoop that Costa misspoke and the strategy hasn’t been signed off yet. This story has been updated to reflect that clarification.

The post Space Force working on new digital modeling strategy appeared first on DefenseScoop.