The United States Space Force (USSF) was signed into law as part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act in recognition that our competitors and adversaries have turned space into a warfighting domain. Potential adversaries recognize the advantage the US gains by operating in space. They are responding, fielding their own systems to exploit the domain and holding US space systems at risk to deny our use of space. The Defense Space Strategy identifies a phased approach to encourage innovative and bold actions to ensure space superiority. Given the challenging and costly nature of testing in space, simulation may be the best option available that allows for the USSF to characterize the complex, system-of-systems (SoS) environment, while mitigating the costs and protecting sensitive mission capabilities that may be revealed by on-orbit testing. The USSF is developing a National Test and Training Complex (NSTTC) to provide critical infrastructure to enable operationally relevant test and training of all-domain, SoS capabilities that form the enterprise response to increasingly sophisticated adversary capabilities and tactics. This paper will concentrate on the development of the digital simulation environment (aka NSTTC-D). Specifically, the authors will discuss how the development team is successfully leveraging test and training Mission Engineering and Model Based Systems Engineering to inform a scaled agile development process based heavily on software and model reuse. As such, the NSTTC-D team will engage heavily in collaboration with the modeling and simulation community from a multi-service, industry, and academia perspective. The reader should be provided with an understanding and appreciation for the NSTTC-D test and training initiatives, tailored simulation processes/challenges, and path forward leveraging simulation as part of its vision to provide space warfighters with a digital venue to develop, validate, and sharpen joint warfighting solutions.
Keywords
AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT, COLLABORATIVE, FRAMEWORK, SIMULATIONS, TESTING, TRAINING
Additional Keywords
US Space Force, National Space Test and Training Complex, Mission Engineering, MBSE