Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Ground Control System (GCS) Development. A Year 2015 Agile Reconfigurable Enterprise

Transcription

1 Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Ground Control System (GCS) Development A Year 2015 Agile Reconfigurable Enterprise David Streisand, Northrop Grumman, October 2011 Inside the Beltway Federal Budget Crunch Time Rick, a deputy director within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (OUSD/AT&L)) is looking at the DoD force structure changes needed to re-balance Defense Department capabilities against current and future threats. Once again, while DoD acquisition and O&M budgets have been slashed, greater numbers of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), with a greater variety of capabilities, are needed. Just six years ago, the UAS industrial community was challenged by the OUSD/AT&L and the various UAS program offices to face this upcoming problem by breaking the mold of proprietary interfaces, non-standard components and stove-piped one-of-a-kind architectures, with the resultant duplication of resources and budgets. This year he expects to see an easing of his budget and capability concerns as a result of the contractor s reaction to the challenge. San Diego, CA Proposal Crunch Time Bob, a senior systems engineer and proposal manager in Northrop Grumman s Advanced Programs & Technology division, is looking at the government s Technical Requirements for the next generation of High-Altitude Long-Endurance (HALE) UAVs and is thinking how to deliver the required capabilities to the warfighter, while keeping down the government s acquisition and life-cycle costs. The airframe structures, avionics, propulsion, communications and payload teams have delivered a world-class design that greatly enhances mission survivability, endurance and ISR mission capabilities. Bob s job is to do for the same for the Ground Control System (GCS) portion of the proposal, while delivering cost savings to the customer. As usual, Bob has a short time to estimate the work and submit his company s bid. One of the first steps in the proposal process is develop a top-level architecture that supports the RFP s requirements. The architecture will help define the development and integration work that must be priced, and will help identify potential areas of reuse and risk factors. In the past, the UAS GCS architecture had been developed from scratch for each UAS program, which led to the problems identified by the OUSD. Today, Bob s engineers are able to quickly map the RFP s requirements to a new standard Framework, the UCS Open Architecture. As a member of the industry-wide UCS Working Group (WG), Bob s company participates in the development and governance of this common, open and scalable platform-independent standard. The advantage of the framework to the government is that it levels the playing field for GCS business opportunities, providing a more competitive environment. The advantage to Bob is that it provides a plug-compatible framework for his company s GCS software services. However, six years ago his company needed to be proactive in anticipating the changes the availability of the framework would bring to the industry, and today it must constantly be prepared to react to innovations introduced by the increased competition. Bob s engineers quickly identify previously developed software services, such as mission planning, which can be reused or reconfigured. The engineer-to-engineer flat interaction gained through participation in the company s Communities of Practice meetings aids them in understanding the reuse possibilities of Stevens Institute of Technology, SDOE-678 mid-term Operational Story and Response Ability Model

2 modules for communications interfaces, Global Information Grid (GIG) C2 interfaces, sensor system interfaces, weapon interfaces, air vehicle C2 interfaces, and Information Assurance. Bob s team then begins to model and analyze the runtime performance and latency needs of the new system. With their analysis, they are able to select from the UCS standards an appropriate middleware solution. Estimating the effort required to test and certify the new GCS system is simplified by a new standard government certification process approved by the FAA, DoD and international civil aviation bodies. The final steps are to estimate the development effort for platform-specific interfaces that may be needed to transform the platform-independent canonical message sets used across the ESB to platform-specific messages for air vehicles, sensors and weapons not yet built to the new standards. El Segundo, CA Project Crisis Time Jane, a Project Manager (PM) on an on-going Northrop Grumman UAS development effort, has a problem. A major component of the mission planner for her ground station effort is falling far short of its performance goals, and is behind schedule. The magnitude of the problem is such that it s in danger of impacting the overall program performance and schedule, and the customer has threatened a stopwork order if the problem cannot be resolved. Her Ground Segment IPT lead queries the members of the company s Mission Planning Community of Practice for potential solutions, and an Internal Research and Development (IRAD) effort is quickly identified that has the potential to replace the non-performing component. When it s verified that the IRAD effort was developed as an encapsulated software service to the UCS Open Architecture standard, and that it s sufficiently mature to be quickly productized, Jane is able to take advantage of the deferred commitment model of the architecture by presenting this change to the customer as a low-cost mitigation of the performance and schedule risk. With the risk plan approved, her Ground Segment ITP re-organizes its resources to effectively carry out the new plan. Grand Forks, ND UAS Reconnaissance Group Stand-Up Ceremony Col. Wright, commander of the 69 th Reconnaissance Group (RG) watches as the first of the new RQ-4D HALE UAVs touches down on his runway and thinks back with a sense of relief and satisfaction over the smooth integration of the new UAVs into his unit s air wing operations. Two months ago, when he first received word that the new advanced UAVs would be stood up under his command, his first thought was the need for new physical infrastructure for the fixed and mobile ground station facilities, increased staff needs, and training needs, each of which is a long lead item, and each of which would have budget needs. To his surprise, he had found that the new system s interoperability with existing standards and equipment meant a diminished need for changes to his facilities. He had also found that commonality with existing user system interfaces and a standardized look-and-feel reduced training times. Especially appreciated was the ground system s capability to interoperate with other UAV systems, even those developed by other contractors, provided they adhered to the new common messaging standards. This new capability to share situational awareness of mission plans and routes, to hand-off control and to accept control from other GCS systems provided a layer of redundancy and flexibility that the 69 th RG had previously lacked. As the last of the new RQ-4D UAVs rolls to a stop, Col. Wright doesn t realize it, but it is the Response Ability of the contractor, the OUSD, and the UAS industry that he is witnessing. Stevens Institute of Technology, SDOE-678 mid-term Operational Story and Response Ability Model

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