| Military Worth Analysis of New Concept Weapons |
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| Apr 01 2006 | |
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Advertisement: To conduct meaningful mission-level analysis of any type, mission simulation specialists must develop suitable smallscale scenarios, called vignettes. Because simulation specialists create these mission-level vignettes to highlight and explore the capabilities of the concept weapon, they differ accordingly. Likewise, since these vignettes must be operationally relevant, the CIT consults other knowledgeable organizations and agencies (e.g., Air Combat Command and AFSAA) and local intelligence personnel for assistance in identifying and vetting potential vignettes. These consultants help to develop a smart inventory force structure appropriate to the vignette for some future time period. MWA performed at the mission level effectively provides analysts with insight not attainable at the campaign level. Therefore, once analysts have performed campaign-level MWA to understand a concept weapon’s achievable effects and subsequently completed mission-level MWA to make the appropriate comparisons, they may choose to rerun the campaign simulation with refined parameters to narrow the range of expected payoff. The entire process generates a potential weapon performance picture that analysts can interpret and confidently communicate to the warfighter community. In summary, the CIT believes MWA is crucial for evaluating the warfighter payoff of a weapons technology and, consequently, for making informed technology investment decisions. As a result, the team is extending the MWA capability to support more AFRL future technologies and integrating concepts. Mr. Larry E. Lewis, of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Munitions Directorate, wrote this article. For more information, contact TECH CONNECT at (800) 203-6451 or place a request at http://www.afrl.af.mil/techconn_index.asp. Reference document MN-H-05-06. Reference 1 Plenge, B. T. “Area Dominance.” AFRL Technology Horizons®, vol 5, no 2 (Apr 04): 49-50. http://www.afrlhorizons.com/Briefs/ Apr04/MN0308.html. |
