Military analysts now have a device that brings together unprecedented modeling and simulation features to assist them better choose, or build weapons to overpower future threats.

Such features allow military researchers to investigate, for instance, how a grenade, artillery round or another weapon performs — or falls short — against moving targets in complex battlefield scenarios, that’s one of the most biggest challenges the army faces today.

With this knowledge, researchers say, Army leaders can identify future technology investments early on, whether it really is modifications to existing weapons or replacing them altogether.

“The Smart Weapon End-to-End Performance Model, or SWEEPM, developed by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, often called ARL, is a group of files and software that cover all impacts linked to firing a round and anything that has effects on the delivery of that round,” said William F. Oberle, Ph.D., Advanced Weapons Concepts branch chief within ARL’s Weapons and Materials Research Directorate.

Oberle said the model’s versatility sets it except other force-on-force models that military planners use to practice sustained operations. With SWEEPM, as it’s called, researchers can model the final effectiveness of all sorts of munitions during the entire target engagement, from target detection through damage estimation with a modular Monte Carlo simulation.

Using the model, researchers can investigate a conceptual or actual guided artillery round, its guidance system and its performance, for instance. Ballistic engineers provide information on how the round could be utilized in an attack, against a tank or truck for example, and insight at the current inventory of the round. Other variables corresponding to material composition of the round, muzzle velocity, how Soldiers aim and fire weapon systems, weather, stationary or moving targets are incorporated as portion of a complete system analysis that when encoded, helps researchers determine effectiveness scenarios, or situations that indicate the quantity of wear and tear the round causes.

“One of the missions of the Advanced Weapons Concepts Branch is to develop modeling and simulation tools to accomplish our performance/effectiveness analyses. With the ability to perform these analyses in a timely manner requires that we glance out and forecast what type tools we’re going to need one day,” Oberle said.

“In 2008, ARL recognized a void in modeling and analyzing smart weapon systems from target acquisition through damage estimation,” Oberle said. “Since a enormous segment of the divisions work sooner or later would involve smart weapons and no existing model may be found, we chose to begin development of what’s now termed SWEEPM.”

The Army completed SWEEPM in April 2013.

“It’s unique in that it was developed as a modular tool in a position to being changed and adapted to model new concepts with minimal turnaround time,” said Mary K. Arthur, principle investigator who’s credited with developing SWEEPM by discreetly integrating legacy and newly developed software.

SWEEPM currently employs two trajectory models, she said, a basic, fast-running 3DoF model used primarily within the development of SWEEPM, and a more complex, modified point mass model which incorporates a GPS navigation model and control forces for terminal guidance.

“Other submodels which might be easily changed out or modified include a target motion model, scout and rangefinder models, damage estimation models, and a recently added in-flight autonomous targeting model.”

Last month, SWEEPM was transitioned to the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center’s, or ARDEC’s, System Engineering Directorate in Picatinny, N.J., at the heels of Army leadership’s renewed emphasis on force-on-force warfare, which had taken a backseat to counterinsurgency operations.

ARL and ARDEC are both elements of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.

According to an ARDEC spokesperson, engineers there are in the course of reviewing the tool for formal adoption, given the high performance computing, or HPC, capabilities of SWEEPM are of interest to the engineers and analysts at ARDEC.

“The ability to run SWEEPM on HPC assets at ARDEC permits the stochastic evaluation of weapon performance by incorporating the genuine world randomness of target motion, target acquisition and projectile flight,” said Ingrid M. Dombroski, competency manager in ARDEC’s System Analysis Division. “SWEEPM is representative of the ever growing collaboration between ARDEC and ARL, where a shared need is met throughout the individual excellence of every center. In terms of SWEEPM, ARL brought forward their expertise in HPC; guidance, navigation and control, and target effects while ARDEC provided a worldwide class user base for beta testing, programmatic support, and analytical and technical proficiency to satisfy a standard Army need.”

Currently, ARL is using the model in a study requested by the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Ga., to observe performance variables for the 40mm grenade. The guts conducts research, development and experimentation to make sure our future maneuver force is ready and equipped to fight and win in a fancy future environment.

Plans are underway to include the tool in an analysis of a conceptually guided artillery round, created by ARL designers, where control forces are going to be required to deal with hitting moving targets. The in-house concept will try to define requirements of an exact round to satisfy certain performance goals, and the outcomes might be fed into programs managed by ARL’s Guidance Technology and Flight Science branches.

ARMY RESEARCH LABORATORY

ARL is a part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to develop technology and engineering solutions for America’s Soldiers.

RDECOM is an immense subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command. AMC is the Army’s premier provider of materiel readiness — technology, acquisition support, materiel development, logistics power projection, and sustainment — to the entire force, around the spectrum of joint military operations. If a Soldier shoots it, drives it, flies it, wears it, eats it or communicates with it, AMC provides it.

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