Enabling DoD’s Test Ranges and Infrastructure to Meet Threats and Operational Needs in the 21st Century
Unclassified Summary
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Committee on Assessing the
Operational Suitability of the DoD
Test and Evaluation Ranges and
Infrastructure
Board on Army Research and
Development
Division on Engineering and
Physical Sciences
Consensus Study Report
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fifth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001
This activity was supported by Contract W911NF-18-D-0002 with the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or agency that provided support for the project.
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-68988-5
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-68988-5
Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.17226/26607
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Suggested citation: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Enabling DoD’s Test Ranges and Infrastructure to Meet Threats and Operational Needs in the 21st Century: Unclassified Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26607.
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COMMITTEE ON ASSESSING THE OPERATIONAL SUITABILITY OF THE DOD TEST AND EVALUATION RANGES AND LNFRASTRUCTURE
HEIDI C. PERRY, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory, Chair
KEVIN G. BOWCUTT, NAE,1 Boeing Corporation
KATHERINE J. GRAEF, U.S. Army (retired)
CONRAD J. GRANT, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
EDWARD R. GREER, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Developmental Test and Evaluation (retired)
MICHAEL A. HAMEL, U.S. Air Force (retired)
BRIAN HOLMES,2 National Intelligence Council
DANA “KEOKI” JACKSON, NAE, The MITRE Corporation
TERRY P. LEWIS, Booz Allen Hamilton
ALBERT A. SCIARRETTA, CNS Technologies, Inc.
MITCHELL SIMMONS,3 National Intelligence University
Staff
WILLIAM “BRUNO” MILLONIG, Director, Scholar
STEVEN DARBES, Program Officer, Study Director
CAMERON MALCOM, Research Associate
MARGUERITE SCHNIEDER, Administrative Coordinator
CHRIS JONES, Senior Finance Business Partner
LIDA BENINSON, Senior Program Officer
RYAN MURPHY, Program Officer
NIA JOHNSON, Program Officer
Consultant
THOMAS PERISON, Workshop Rapporteur
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BOARD ON ARMY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
KATHARINA MCFARLAND, Retired Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology), Chair
MICHAEL BEAR, Booz Allen Hamilton, Vice Chair
ANDREW ALLEYNE, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
DAVID AUCSMITH, University of Washington
JAMES BAGIAN, NAE,1 University of Michigan
JOAN BIENVENUE, University of Tennessee Oak Ridge Innovation Institute
LYNN DUGLE, Independent Consultant
JOHN FARR, United States Military Academy at West Point
GEORGE “RUSTV” GRAY III, NAE, Los Alamos National Laboratory
WILLIAM HIX, Major General U.S. Army (retired)
GREGORY JOHNSON, Lockheed Martin
DUNCAN MCGILL, Mercyhurst University
CHRISTINA MURATA, Deloitte
ADITYA P. PADHA, Deloitte
ALBERT SCIARRETTA, CNS Technologies, Inc.
GEOFFREY THOME, SAIC
JAMES THOMSEN, Seaborne Defense, LLC
JOSEP TORRELLAS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Staff
WILLIAM “BRUNO” MILLONIG, Director
STEVEN DARBES, Program Officer
SARAH JUCKETT, Program Officer
TINA LATIMER, Program Coordinator
CAMERON MALCOM, Research Associate
TRAVON JAMES, Senior Program Assistant
CLEMENT MULOCK, Program Assistant
CHRIS JONES, Senior Finance Business Partner
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1 Member, National Academy of Engineering.
Reviewers
This Consensus Study Report was reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in making each published report as sound as possible and to ensure that it meets the institutional standards for quality, objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Bill Conley, Mercury Systems,
Derrick Hinton, Scientific Research Corporation,
Gregory Johnson, Lockheed Martin Corporation,
Hans Miller, The MITRE Corporation,
Gary Polansky, Sandia National Laboratories,
Julie Ryan, Wyndrose Technical Group,
Johnny Sawyer, The Sawyer Group, LLC, and
Donald C. Winter, NAE,1 U.S. Navy (ret.).
Although the reviewers listed above provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations of this report nor did they see the final draft before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Alton D. Romig, Jr., NAE Executive Officer and Lockheed Martin (retired). He was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with the standards of the National Academies and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content rests entirely with the authoring committee and the National Academies.
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1 Member, National Academy of Engineering.
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Preface
Understanding the critical role of operational test and evaluation (OT&E), the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) tasked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine with conducting two studies, one unclassified (referred to as Phase 1) and one classified (referred to as Phase 2) to assess the suitability of the Department of Defense (DoD) ranges and infrastructure to accommodate OT&E in the and around 2035. The Phase 2 builds on the work of the Phase 1 study1 and additionally assesses threat replication in OT&E and emerging technologies expected to be enter OT&E in the coming decades.
The fundamental conclusion of the Phase 1 study was that the OT&E community must change its paradigm from a system-by-system approach to a system-of-systems approach if it is to test in a manner representative of how the joint force will fight in 2035. The pace of adversary technological advancement, particularly China, combined with accelerating diffusion and proliferation of dual-use technologies, has changed the risk calculus for the United States. The strategic risk of failing to invest in the capability to truly test against a realistic adversary at scale is now too high. DoD must implement a broad range of materiel and non-materiel solutions related to test range infrastructure, data management and data sharing, modeling and simulation, and human capital if it is to maintain its qualitative edge in OT&E.
This Phase 2 report of the Committee on Assessing the Operational Suitability of the DoD Test and Evaluation Ranges and Infrastructure will illustrate that, while the test and evaluation (T&E) community contains pockets of exquisite capability and has initiated many of the programs necessary to modernize the T&E community, significant shortfalls and obstacles remain. The committee was grateful for the opportunity to visit several test and evaluation facilities, both during site visits and virtually. It is clear to the committee that the T&E workforce is comprised of dedicated and extremely competent professionals from a diverse collection of disciplines, and they consistently and routinely exhibited impressive ingenuity, both individually and collectively. It is this spirit of ingenuity and innovation that has enabled the United States to maintain its competitive edge, despite its relatively low investment in T&E.
The pace of adversary advancement in military capability, reach, and ambition has clearly overcome the ability of the T&E workforce to simply do more with less. This report builds on the themes from the Phase 1 study, adding classified details where applicable, fills in missing gaps in the first report, and closely examined how scientific and technical intelligence (S&TI) informs OT&E. This report also provides an examination of how OT&E must evolve in critical technical areas if DoD is to have confidence that its people, our national treasure, will be equipped with weapons systems upon which they can rely.
Finally, the report ends with an analysis of how the Range of the Future connects to its ultimate T&E customer—the services that provide able and ready forces and the Combatant Commands that employ them, and by extension, our Allied partners. Complementing this discussion of the Range of the
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1 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2021, Necessary DoD Range Capabilities to Ensure Operational Superiority of U.S. Defense Systems: Testing for the Future Fight, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/26181.
Future is a section on innovation, where the report will present how to build and nurture an innovation infrastructure, which must accompany the material and non-material solution space identified above. If implemented, it will allow DoD to match speed to field with current and future warfighter needs.