A team of ASRC Federal engineers competed and won top prize for their solution as part of an innovation challenge hosted by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD) at the University of Mary Washington Dahlgren Campus Nov. 1-3, 2023.
Navy Combat Systems interface with many systems that are rapidly changing – often at a faster rate than is possible to fully integrate with the existing architecture without expensive redesign and time-consuming testing. For this challenge, the NSWCDD was seeking a highly adaptable interface approach that could support the dynamic systems environment onboard Navy ships.
Thirteen teams competed for the $250,000 prize, provided by NavalX. With deep expertise in the field of radar data management and software development, the ASRC Federal team created an extremely fast and flexible web-based visualization environment that provides a clear view of the current situational environment for Navy personnel onboard a ship.
ASRC Federal’s team included John Frankel, Lu Verissimo and Orest Ukrainsky. “Our solution was made to be flexible. Using standard software and coded files, our solution presents the information in a coherent fashion on the TACSIT Display (or similar platforms),” said Frankel, ASRC Federal product software developer and lead on this project.
ASRC Federal’s solution used both Cloud and native solutions, and the team analyzed telemetry data as part of the display.
“This set of flexible tools and scripts helped us manipulate, analyze and parse out important data to create an enhanced operational environment for our Naval fleet,” Frankel continued. “Our microservice-based application can quickly identify the location of nearby friendly or enemy vessels, missiles, or other units, accurately classify them, and give operators a more complete view of their current tactical environment. It also provides a map-based capability to geographically pinpoint the location of our ship in relationship to its surroundings.”
The Navy was pleased with the outcome of the challenge and the opportunity to build a network of thinkers and companies that can collaborate to better support U.S. warfighters. “This is hopefully the beginning of a journey, and not a completion of just a few days, that we take this technology and continue to work on it,” said NSWCDD Senior Scientific Technical Manager for Combat System Architecture Ted Jung. “We hope to transition and provide capabilities for Sailors and Marines that we support.”
“We hope the technology ASRC Federal developed will aid our defense customers in the future, and we were truly honored to participate,” noted Ukrainsky.
The ASRC Federal team was interviewed by Mike Fabey for a story in Jane’s Navy International, available to all Jane’s subscribers.
