The Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA) provides an advanced set of interoperability software, interfaces, and connectivity for use in joint distributed testing and training. This tutorial will discuss how TENA works and why it is important to the test and training communities, with some comparison to other interoperability architectures. TENA provides testers and trainers software such as the TENA Middleware—a high-performance, real-time, low-latency communication infrastructure that is used by training range instrumentation software and tools during execution of a range training event. The standard TENA Object Models provide data definitions for common range entities and thus enables semantic interoperability among training range applications. The TENA tools, utilities, adapters, and gateways assist in creating and managing an integration of range resources.
In constructive simulation environments, the amount of data collected in each event can be large. But in a live-virtual-constructive test or training event, when data from each individual live entity is collected in addition to range data, telemetry data, and simulation data, the amount of data collected can be astronomical. The estimate for data collected from a 16-ship F-35 formation versus 16-ship aggressor aircraft formation, embedded in a larger LVC scenario, is over 50 terabytes for a two-hour event, about half of which is video. Analyzing this data efficiently, not to mention providing immediate after-action reviews to the participants, requires a new mechanism. TRMC has developed a Knowledge Management/Big Data Analysis architecture and implementation seamlessly connected to both the TENA architecture and other range communication and storage mechanisms to tackle this problem.