2022 Test Instrumentation Workshop: Range of the Future

At a future test day involving several Major Range and Test Facility Bases(MRTFBs) , at O Dark Thirty, the sleek, autonomous, hypersonic air defense missile burst from its launcher and streaked into the Dark Sky. Within seconds, the weapon acquired the swarm of targets from off-board sensors in the Air, Land, Sea and Space; all communicating through the satellite and terrestrial networks in a multi-domain engagement. The network provides information to other weapon systems at the ready to engage as continuous information from the range instrumentation sensors, depict the success or lack of success of the engagement. This system of system motif assures superior and decisive action against any adversary. Suddenly, the swarming targets make a violent but preprogrammed maneuver to counter the myriad of weapon systems engaging, prompting an associated action in all the system of systems engaging. Range Control Systems automatically merged all range sensor data for the best estimate of trajectory of all players with data coming from Radar, GPS, Optics, Telemetry, and other systems operating in a remote sensing configuration driven by AI, Machine Language, and special data fusion algorithms.  The resultant data was critical for the test range customers’ decision-making processes and validation of their models and simulations as well “for record” evaluations of the individual weapons systems and an integrated multi-Domain holistic evaluation.  At the involved MRTFBs, this complex orchestration of threats, advanced interceptors, and equally advance data collection instrumentation, is just another day at the worlds most sophisticated open-air test capability.

Our theme this year is Range of the Future recognizes the importance of the Services working together in preparing to meet the challenges of the scenario I painted to you above.

Yes, the above is a vision of the future and not yet being done today; but the reality is it is closer than you think and for us to support emerging weapon systems today, we have to accelerate our instrumentation system developments to keep pace and assure readiness in these emerging challenging environments. Understanding emerging technologies is critical to prepare the Range of the Future.

This year’s edition of the Test Instrumentation Workshop will support our need to be alert and aware of all technological developments that may have an impact on our test and evaluation operations. This workshop will discuss selected tenets of the various sensor instrumentation support to include the network, communications, and the massive resultant data.

Plenary Discussions, tutorials, technical sessions, and exhibitor demos will lead to a thorough and relevant discourse at this workshop and aid those in attendance, to prepare for the future. 

Please join us at the 2022 ITEA Test Instrumentation Workshop to share your experiences, lessons learned, and solutions to the problems we face in today’s constrained test and evaluation environments.

View the agenda here.