Innovation through Discovery Experimentation
(Room S320C)
28 Nov 17
5:00 PM
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5:30 PM
As the military refocuses its training and acquisition from the counter-insurgency conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to the potential for major military conflict in an era of new technologies, there is a need to explore new concepts for using these new technologies. These explorations are essential for developing new tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), integrating new capabilities into existing forces, but are also critical in the choices of which technologies to mature and acquire. Discovery experimentation is a process for using simulation to place emerging technologies in the hands of warfighters engaged in virtual battlefields to explore the military utility of new concepts for using emerging systems. Discovery experimentation is designed to allow learning and modification from trial to trial and in that way differs significantly for both traditional scientific experimentation and technology demonstrations. In support of the US Air Force, research staff from the Institute for Defense Analyses conducted a multi-trial, discovery experiment to explore new concepts in close air support (CAS) employing Network-Enabled weapons. This paper will use this experiment to further define discovery experimentation; how it can use existing facilities and simulations with modifications to conduct the exploration; identify potential adversary counters, and how the data acquisition and results of progressive trials altered the initial concept to extract new TTPs and define requirements for supporting equipment. A small team of CAS experts (instructor level) experimented with the new technology in a stressing threat environment responding to the call for fires from an experienced military commander and fires officer. The concept and supporting data that emerged provides initial evidence that the new approach might be capable of addressing more targets in less time than had been possible with traditional tactics might be possible.