An important aspect of modern cyber testing & evaluation is the immersion of the system under test (SUT) into an operationally relevant environment.  This enables the SUT to be cyber-tested while performing a simulated mission at any time and place in the world while sitting safely in a test facility. In addition to this being a more realistic test from the perspective that the SUT avionics are in operational states with operational dataflows, this type of testing also enables the tester to assess the mission impact of cyber threats.

The Redstone Test Center has developed a flight-representative environment to immerse Army systems into this type of operationally relevant test environment. This environment is flight-representative in that it includes SUT stimulation with realistic Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, inertial sensor signals, and physical air pressure to the SUT’s pitot-static system. This environment has been integrated with live inputs from simulation sources such as One Semi-Automated Forces Distributed Interactive Simulation (OneSAF DIS), flight simulators, and other battlespace simulators and with pre-recorded flight data or flight simulation data. To date, these tools have successfully put several Army rotor wing systems into “simulated flight”, including the CH-47F, UH-60M, and AH-64E.

This paper describes the issues and challenges associated with developing this simulation environment and how these challenges were overcome. Of particular interest were the challenges involved with integrating low-resolution data sources with GNSS and inertial data simulators that require high-resolution data by using dynamic feedback-control theory and analysis methods. The chosen solution integrates both off-the-shelf and custom hardware and software to create high-fidelity SUT input signals from any data inputs agnostic of the input data quality or type. Additional SUT stimulation inputs will continue to be developed and integrated with additional Army systems such as UAVs, ground vehicles, and munitions.