Army engineers are working to equip the service’s new weapon
systems with electronic devices that can sense and record critical
information. The technology, product of the Developmental Test Command,
is designed not only to improve the Army’s testing capabilities,
but also to help provide critical data throughout a program’s
entire life cycle.
The Developmental Test Command (DTC) conducts thousands of tests
each year on new or upgraded military systems that defense contractors
produce for the Army. Land vehicles and other military hardware,
for example, undergo rigorous testing at DTC’s Aberdeen Test
Center in Maryland.
To enhance the Army’s testing capabilities, engineers at
Aberdeen have developed “intelligent instrumentation”
that can sense and record a wide range of data, such as vehicle
performance characteristics, parts reliability, wear and tear, and
the rate of fuel consumption when soldiers operate systems in the
field. In January, a group of engineers from the Aberdeen Test Center
traveled to Fort Lewis, Wash., to install specially designed instrumentation
packages in the armored wheeled vehicles loaned to the U.S. Army
by Canada, Germany and Italy.
ATC engineers designed the devices to collect data on these vehicles,
as two Brigade Combat Teams at Fort Lewis put them through their
paces. The BCTs are the Army’s new medium brigades and will
use a Light Armored Vehicle (called the Stryker Interim Armored
Vehicle), instead of tanks. Until the Stryker is fielded, soldiers
at Fort Lewis will train with loaned LAVs.
The Fort Lewis project was an opportunity for DTC to demonstrate
the merits of a program known as virtual information system integrated
online, or VISION. This technology involves intelligent test instrumentation,
the use of telecommunication systems to relay test data from remote
sites and a digital library on the Internet—where program
managers and other decision makers can retrieve the latest information
about tests.
At the heart of VISION is a suite of devices known as the advanced
distributed modular acquisition systems, or ADMAS. These instruments
give test engineers and managers of military acquisition programs
valuable data on vehicle performance characteristics such as turning
radius, acceleration, engine heat, power output, fluid temperatures
and the response of vehicle components to various shocks and vibrations.
The data acquisition systems installed in the loaned vehicles at
Fort Lewis and embedded in the Army’s Interim Armored Vehicle
will help the Army fine-tune the type of testing the Stryker and
other systems are to undergo at Aberdeen and elsewhere, said Craig
Turner, who leads ATC’s automotive instrumentation team. Turner
believes similar devices ultimately will be embedded in all new
Army systems as they are manufactured. They also will be used throughout
the systems’ life cycle for purposes that go beyond testing—recording
logistics and maintenance information, such as rate of fuel use,
rate of wear on parts and the amount of ammunition expended.
“Our goal is to perfect instrumentation on military platforms,”
Turner explained. “With the Fort Lewis exercise and the tests
we’re doing here (at Aberdeen), we are demonstrating how the
Army will be able to put embedded instruments in vehicles when they
are built—and use this instrumentation to harvest data during
testing, during training and peacetime conditions, and even during
combat,” he noted. “Once you perfect the technology
of acquiring data as vehicles are used and deployed, you can record
anything you can put a sensor on. We talk about anticipatory logistics,
where we will monitor the fuel level and consumption, monitor engine
oil pressure and parameters, and maybe do a health test of a major
power-train part or electrical system.”
While ATC developed the VISION data instrumentation, digital library
and communication links, the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) contributed
its high-performance computing capabilities at Aberdeen Proving
Ground. ARL also developed database applications and helped with
the design of the VISION web site.
Turner said the Army should use the feedback that smart instruments
provide during system operations to keep refining and tailoring
DTC’s developmental tests. This information also can enhance
tests by the Army Operational Test Command that involve soldiers
in a maneuver scenario, he added.
Even before the demonstration at Fort Lewis, ATC had presented
the smart instrumentation to other organizations, including the
Army’s program manager for the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles
(FMTV), the U.S. Department of Transportation and Volvo Trucks of
North America. Through its Intelligent Transportation Systems program,
the Department of Transportation is trying to reach a goal of 50
percent fewer truck-related fatalities in the United States by 2010.
The department funded the development of new technologies to help
drivers avoid collisions and automatically notify authorities when
an accident occurs.
Manufacturers such as Volvo, Mack Truck and Freightliner have responded
by rolling out their first test vehicles under DOT’s Intelligent
Vehicles Initiative, a program that consists of multiple demonstration
projects. The intent is to accelerate the use of technologies that
warn drivers of dangerous situations, recommend actions and, in
some cases, even assume partial control of the vehicle.
Technology Demonstration
Beginning about two years ago, ATC became involved in the Intelligent
Vehicles Initiative through a test of 100 Volvo trucks driving various
routes across the United States and Canada. The joint test program
with DOT and Volvo demonstrated that ATC’s sensors and recorders
can be integrated into vehicle designs and provide information that
helps solve problems, Turner said.
“We worked with Volvo Truck of North America and designed
our equipment to interface into the wiring harness and connectors
of the trucks,” Turner explained. “It is absolutely
an example of installing a complete data-acquisition device during
manufacture ... integrated right into the design of the vehicle.
“Now that the analysts are getting into the data and using
the [VISION] tools, they are coming up with new things they need
to know, so it’s continuing to expand. With 100 vehicles running
across the U.S. and Canada day in and day out, and 6 million miles
of the 25-million-mile test completed, you can imagine the magnitude
of the data,” Turner said. “Even with these terabytes
of data, however, you can query the field and drill down to find
out what is happening in minute detail. You can find out what happened
in a vehicle the instant a driver hit the brakes. If we can make
the system smart enough to perform the analysis required to answer
questions, we can also make it smart enough to anticipate problems.”
Project managers of military systems, additionally, can take advantage
of the VISION smart data acquisition systems and digital library
to help them anticipate problems and keep their programs on track,
officials said.
“We’ve worked with ATC to use VISION for some tests,
because we needed to get data relatively quickly and in some detail,”
said John Hretz, a test engineer with the Army’s FMTV program
office, in Warren, Mich. “We’ve used the digital library
for about a year. There have been a few glitches, some needed improvements
to administrative housekeeping and some things we would like to
do better, but ATC is working on that.”
It sometimes takes testers more time to enter data into the digital
library than he would have preferred, Hretz explained, and it can
be difficult to locate certain types of information in a sequential
order and understand it. But the availability of the digital library
from any location to users with access rights makes VISION a useful
program, he added.
“The way it’s set up now, if you are on travel and
have a government laptop, you can access the information you need
to keep up with what’s going on,” Hretz said.
According to David Brown, who oversees DTC’s test technology,
“There is a strong correlation between the transformation
in the Army and a revolutionary transformation in testing.”
The Army is modernizing existing weapon systems with advanced digital
communications technologies and enhanced situational awareness capabilities.
It is investing in research and development to field a lighter,
more versatile yet lethal Objective Force by 2010. The service has
identified more than 30 key technologies that it will need for the
Objective Force and earmarked billions of dollars for the research
and development needed to make these technologies a reality by 2010.
The Objective Force will fight with so-called Future Combat Systems
linked together on the battlefield in a network. Testers will need
to work from diverse locations, also linked into a network. The
VISION program, using high-speed communication links such as satellite
telecommunications and the Defense Research and Engineering Network,
is making this “distributed testing” possible, said
Brown.
“The bottom line is that our Virtual Proving Ground initiative
provides the modeling and simulation capabilities—the environments
and the stimuli—we need to test future systems in a distributed
fashion. VISION gives us the capability to build remotely controlled
instrumentation into systems, remotely configure this instrumentation
from afar, and make data acquired available for downloading from
anywhere.”
Ultimately, said Turner, “the goal is to put information
at the fingertips of people who don’t specifically have engineering
data from a vehicle to make decisions—and give it to them
so quickly and so accurately that it gives materiel developers an
edge in perfecting their designs and gives the commander an edge
in combat.” nd
Mike Cast is a public affairs officer at the Army Developmental
Test Command, in Aberdeen, Md.