The Joint Simulation Environment: Where It Stands Now
March 5, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
Well, good afternoon, everybody. I’m Major General Scott Cain from the Air Force Test Center, and you’re here today for the joint simulation environment where it stands now. And I’m joined today by two panelists, Colonel Matt Tito Ryan, who is the Senior materiel leader for the Air Force for advanced training capabilities. I think on your program, you’ll see that as the senior material leader for simulations. So t2 maybe you can discuss that during the panel and clear clear that up for us. And I have Colonel Corey Klopstein, who’s the Program Executive Officer for the Space Force for Operational Test and training infrastructure in the Space Systems Command. So gentlemen, thanks for joining us today for the for the panel, and I’d like to start with just saying you know, through through this AFA, we’ve talked about a lot of topics, everything from next generation air superiority, space control, the effects of AI On on defense, and a lot of transformational topics. And I will go ahead and say up front here that I think test and training in a synthetic environment, although maybe not on its surface, on that same level, but I do think it is on par As a transformational capability in defense with with some of these other topics, and I look forward to digging into that and maybe challenging that hypothesis as we, as we go about the discussion. I also want to immediately depart from the topic of the discussion, which is where it stands now, because I think it’s important that that we give a little background before we jump into where we are today and talk about how we got here. And I know there are, there are some in the audience who probably have a deep understanding of JSC. We’ve talked about it in AFA and a lot of forums, but I but I think it’s important for us to level the playing field, make sure everybody understands, really, how we got here, how this started, before we talk about where it stands now. And the other departure I’m going to make, which I think is a as interesting as anything to anybody, is, is the future. So where are we going with with JSE, so, so t2 I’ll start with you, and before we talk about where it stands, now, I’d like to get a little history and a little strategic context on the original purpose and vision for for JSC, I think it’s fairly commonly understood. For f 35 initial operation, initial Operational Test and Evaluation, but with a little more depth, can you explain the original purpose and vision for this capability? Sure.
Col. C. Matt Ryan:
Thanks, sir. So as just stated, it was started as a peculiar program, specifically for F 35 to get through IoT ne on block 3f. The development of JSC started roughly in 2016 with the Navy, and this was in recognition, as most programs have figured out, that you can’t live fly everything that you want to go test right? It’s just not possible. We don’t have the range infrastructure to do it any more longer, for many reasons, and we also have security concerns that present significant challenges with that. So we, you know, progressed through time in 2023 in the fall of 2020 3f, 35 executed runs for score in JSC to finish off the Capstone activity of IoT and E we Okay, I think in between that time, the key event that occurred was early 2022, calendar year, and that was when the Air Force weapons school took a trip to Pax River, which is where the current instantiation of JSC sits, and They went there and flew those F 35 Sims and discovered that they learned a lot of things that they weren’t learning, either in live fly or in the other Sims available for their weapon system. So as one might expect, that got some pretty quick attention from senior leadership when the schoolhouse says, Hey, this is the best way that we can go and train our future weapons school officers for this platform. And that started a series of meetings and decisions and activities that happened throughout 2022 that culminated in the end of that year, literally a Christmas gift, if you will, of designating agile comm. Support as the PEO for a program of record for JSC for the Air Force, so agile combat support, as General Cain alluded to, there’s been some reorganization that has now transitioned to PEO training, and JSC is now in the advanced training capabilities division within that directorate in March of 2023 so shortly after declaring a program of record for the Air Force, Chief of Staff, General Brown, at the time, signed out a capability guidance development memorandum where he said that he wants all new weapons systems to be able to integrate with JSC, and then He says, to basically assess if you’re a fielded weapon system, you should assess whether you should integrate your simulators with JSC, and that would be both from a operational training perspective and from a test perspective. So that was kind of the evolution of activity in a fairly short, concise manner, on how we went from just being an OT capability for F 35 to being an OT capability, plus an operational training capability, and no longer being just an F 35 capability, but turning that into a fleet wide capability for all of the caf to leverage.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
And I’ll go ahead and comment a little bit on the answer as well. One of the things that I didn’t hear you say there was as a development capability beyond operational test, as far as that initial vision of JSC, so that’s something I’d like to hit later in the in the discussion. And then then a couple other maybe follow on, questions on, on why we decided we needed that capability. You stated that we couldn’t test in the open air range the way that we that we needed to. So that’s one thing for a fifth Gen assessment of an F 35 but I think there’s an element in there also of the integrated capability of multi ships and a system of systems, and the inability to to take the few versus few, relatively that we can do in live fly, and scale that to a to a theater level, to really understand the multi platform capability. And the other one that maybe is, is the question was, is, is a is, or was affordability part of the equation? You know, open air systems, open air testing of of these systems can be prohibitively expensive for for many programs. So do you think that was part of the original thinking about it, or is that just a a secondary benefit of using this kind of capability?
Col. C. Matt Ryan:
I would say probably more of a secondary benefit. I would not sell JSC necessarily, as it’s an affordability kind of consideration. It is filling a gaping gap in our capability to test and train and yes sir, when we talk about where are we headed development of new weapon systems as well. There are things that we just cannot do without something like what JSC offers. So to me, it’s more about you’re either going to accept the risk of carrying that gap into the future indefinitely, or you’re going to get after it and fill that gap. So it’s not so much about affordability, in my mind, and
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
So it’s not so much about affordability, in my mind, and to before we move on to the where it stands now, and I give Corey a chance to grab the mic last follow on. Were there any other enablers that made that possible to be achieved at the time. Technology, for example, that makes JSE possible now, whereas maybe we couldn’t do that before, you said 2016 when we decided to move forward.
Col. C. Matt Ryan:
Yeah, I don’t think there were necessarily any things where we were creating new physics with JSC. It was, you know, squarely in the engineering solution space that we were working there were certainly some lessons learned. One of the and probably it was relearned, if we were most accurate. But one of those was that we had to get our world class software developers in the same room with F 35 pilots, and have them work together daily so that we were actually building the right thing. Software developers are awesome at doing software, but they don’t know the weapon system and they don’t know the TTPs. They don’t know what’s important about a test. So you had to get those two together and get those two different functions working together in concert, and it had to be a daily battle rhythm, almost, of data exchange between them. So that was one huge piece the team did, arguably push the bounds c plus. Plus is the programming language for JSC for grid in particular, and grid is kind of the mess. Exchange heartbeat of JSC they were pushing on, how do you optimize and be most efficient with that code base so that it would actually be able to run in real time? That is the challenge with something like JSC is that you’re trying to do everything real time with operators in the loop. So if you don’t have an efficiently running code base, then you have a lot of crashes and a lot of dissatisfied either test customers or training customers, because all they’re doing is rebooting the sim all day. Right? So those were kind of the big items. So again, not not something to bend to physics or earth shattering in that respect, but those were key things that enabled us to get to where we are today. And just while we’re talking enablers real quick, I’ll say one of the key enablers as we move forward is to have an effective software development pipeline, and that’s something that we’re getting stood up right now, leveraging enterprise capabilities from across the Air Force, some of the capabilities that HN under their Directorate is working and that some of the software engineering groups are working, we’re in partnership with them to stand up an effective software pipeline that we the Air Force and the Navy, can combine together on and have that at all of our dev sites, and also nodes at all of our ops sites, so that we can deploy code efficiently, and hopefully we’ll have the Space Force on there as well in the near future, so that we’re all collaborating together on a single code base.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
All right, thanks, you two. And hopefully that gives everybody a little bit of level setting on on how we got here, and now we can move into the the meat of where it stands. Now, before we do that, Corey, I want to go ahead and give you a chance to to address where the Space Force stands. Now you’re currently not in JSE, so, so where is the Space Force now, absent that, and with the capability that you do have, how are you using it? So basically, what’s the current state of play in the in the Space Force?
Col. Corey Klopstein:
Yes, sir. Well, first, I’m happy to sit here and learn from you and t2 as you you know, are paving the way in many ways, for us to follow and learning some lessons that we want to make sure that we leverage going forward. But I think I would say kind of, you know, two things to that, sir. First is, we know as a Space Force, that you know, in order for JSE to be as effective as possible, and for our, you know, joint partners to be able to exercise and test in the most realistic environment as possible, that you need space effects within JSE. And so when we started working with t2 you know, about a year ago or so, that was the initial discussion was, how do you how do we bring the Space Force in and leverage the expertise the Space Force has to be able to enhance JSC as much as possible? And so we’ve been working with t2 since then to to build out, you know, what we think is the right approach going forward and and to lay the groundwork to be able to build that I think that the second thing is, you know, I talked about this this morning, but similar to what t2 just talked about with the JSF, for the Space Force, we need a high end synthetic environment to be able to do some of the things that we would like to do with many runs that we know that we can’t do live in the same way that you’re talking about with the JSF. And so there’s, there’s kind of two lanes that that we’re going to cooperate with t2 on one is to be able to have space effects within JSC, and then potentially another is to leverage the the development and things that you have done within the program office to build out our synthetic environment. We’re trying to lay the groundwork for that right now. We also are represented, you know, in the JSC user group. We’ve got JSC leadership syncs that we do with with t2 and so we’ve got, we’re doing a lot of work with the program office, and we think we’ve got, you know, a good way forward and a good partnership that I know that we’re going to leverage for a long time.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
And so at the beginning, we talked about the different uses for Readiness and Training and for tests and different forms of tests, and for ultimately, capability development. So currently, how would you describe I love your focus on an integration environment and building that into JSC. So I think it’s a great way to start into this, this journey. But, but what then on the, I guess, on the training and readiness side? Do do guardians rely on in the absence of JSE?
Col. Corey Klopstein:
Well, right now there’s, there’s a couple of different ways that that we do this. And you know, if any of you have seen the some charts that I’ve presented in the past, what we what we’ve done previously, is we’ve worked within our mission areas to do to do training. We have not done Cross mission area training. And so that is one leap forward that we need to do, capability wise, to ensure Guardian readiness is most effective. And so we have standard space trainers that we have deployed out to the units, and the units use those as their main trainers. For the most part. There are other trainers, though, to fill gaps that units have have established. The problem with that is, while that that has been innovative, there, they are not interconnected. And so what we’re trying to do is establish multiple distributed training environments, excuse me, multiple synthetic environments, one for distributed training and one, one for the high end. The distributed training environment that we’re working on right now is called swarm. We use that for our space flags. And we’re working with Delta 11, Starcom and the 3/92 partnering with them to try to get that as realistic as possible. And we want to make sure that that’s the training system that we use to have Cross mission area training. Going forward, though, we won’t just need the high fidelity training. We also need the test capabilities that you have talked about. And so we also are going to need, we think, a high fidelity synthetic environment, not just to validate what we need to do from a system performance standpoint, but also to be able to train in and so that’s what, that’s what our vision is going forward for Otti, and that’s we’re trying to build out.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
Okay, thanks, Corey, now t2 I’m gonna, I’m gonna shift back to you, and now we’re gonna dig into where it stands now. So Can, can you just lay out what the current capability is, knowing that background and what we put in place at the outset here. Where does it stand now? What is the current capability?
Col. C. Matt Ryan:
Yeah. So today, there’s one JSC site on the globe that’s at Pax River Naval Air Station. In a couple of weeks, there will be two. So we’ve been working very diligently for quite some time with our JSC enterprise to stand up that first Air Force site, and that’ll be a Nellis Air Force Base. So today, what we’ve accomplished, if I look back over 2024 at Pax River, they had about 800 air crew come through there to do operational training for various F 35 squadrons and school houses. So all three of the service schoolhouses have been there, Air Force, Navy, Marines, they flew roughly 10,000 sorties and shot about 30,000 Amram shots in those sorties. And learned a lot, changed some of their TTPs and syllabus. Also learned things about the weapons system itself, and found things that we had not uncovered elsewhere. So a lot of value added to the fleet and to our readiness on being able to use that capability. At Nellis, we actually, two weeks ago, had the Royal Australian Air Force there with one of their squadrons, and they flew one of the first vols at Nellis Air Force Base using JSC and our 8f 30 fives that have been established there. So originally, when we started to stand up JSC at Nellis, we were talking about a mid 2027, timeline before we would be able to get anything from an IOC kind of perspective. General Cunningham, when he was the Warfare Center commander, he challenged the entire JSC enterprise and said, Hey, again, we have a huge gap right now. I need something sooner. What can you do? Can you give me something sooner? So when I say, in a couple of weeks, we’ll have a second site that’ll be what we’re calling an early operational capability that’ll be built upon a capability that we had already gotten started on, thankfully. So we got a little bit ahead of the game, but we had eight cockpits there that were there to represent Red Air. We call them vats, virtual air threat solution. We have made those cockpits dual use, so I can either run them as a red air or I can run them as an F 35 right now. So the presentation that we are working toward, and that the 29th Test and Evaluation Squadron, they just went through last week and did their sim certain assessment, we’re expecting a quick look, possibly as early as Friday of this week, and then a final report in a couple of weeks. All of the initial info I’ve received is it was very favorably received by the 29th test. But I’m not going to speculate beyond that, but I’m expecting the quick look like I said this week, but that was looking at a capability of we can either fly an eight ship of F 35 versus all constructive threats. Or we can do a four v4 for Red Air man threats versus 4f 30 fives. So that’ll be the early operational capability that we expect to offer to the calf here in just a couple of weeks. So before the month is over, that’s our expectation, is that we will have that as a schedulable training asset for the caf, and hopefully for them to also bring in coalition partners. That’s obviously a big emphasis area for our senior leaders, is to be able to do those reps and sets in a combined fashion with those coalition partners as well. And one of the things that that you didn’t mention.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
In yet is the dinners, the digital test and training ranges, which are part of the Air Force Test Center, so near and dear to me. But could, could you give a little bit of an update on where we are actually first, what the dinners are there for? And I can help you with that, if, if you’d like me to chime in a little bit. And then, and then, what, what the status of those is, yeah, so the digital test and training ranges.
Col. C. Matt Ryan:
So for the Air Force, we’re standing up three total sites at, you know, at the moment, one of those is under the Warfare Center. The one that I just talked about, the joint Integrated Test and Training Center, or gig Nellis, literally across the parking lot is the ditter Nellis. So the focus of jitt would be operational training as a primary mission set. The focus of the ditter Nellis would be operational test as a primary mission set. And then there’s also a facility at Edwards Air Force Base, also under the Air Force Test Center, and its primary mission set will be more one supporting the enterprise for V and V activities, because there’s an awful lot of that that we’re going to have to grind through as we continue to mature the capability and add more virtual presence of various weapon systems. But they’re also there for experimentation purposes, and therefore developmental tests, I would say, today, just to be a realist, the developmental test capabilities are probably more centered on being able to do things like testing your HSI or your human system interface. What you would not do in a JSC today, and I don’t know that you would ever necessarily get there, is you’re not going to do like radar runs, right? That’s not going to replace zipping up and down cords road at Edwards. So So those are kind of the primary use cases. One thing I want to emphasize, though, is that all three of them and PAC server are all running the exact same JSC technical baseline. So you could run any of those mission sets. It’s just those organizations have primary missions that they do, right? So OT, dt and operational test, but they can support one another. If one organization is getting maxed out in their mission area and another one has some capacity, you could move a mission from one of those facilities to another, because there’s no difference between the JC battle space that is at each location. The thing that will be different is perhaps which virtual weapon systems are present there. So jedik Nellis, more or less intends to integrate every piece of the calf that we envision having in the future, right? All the fighters, bombers, everything that is putting weapons into the airspace will be Jedis, whereas the ditters may be more focused on particular weapon systems that afotech And do teeny are driving a test campaign through, right? So that would be the primary driver of a difference between the appreciate that explanation.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
The way the 4/45, test Squadron at Edwards would describe the ditters is there is a spectrum that the Air Force Test Center operates across, from science and technology experimentation all the way to Operational Test and fielding with our partners in the Warfare Center and other other match comes and on this end, that that dinner E Is, is well well suited, and maybe better suited than than live fly environments and that and the same thing on this side, for the dinner and for the tactics, techniques and procedures, development and operational testing. There’s a middle zone here where, where there’s still more efficiency in doing those radar runs, or the platform based tests in the in the open air over time, that gap will probably close between the two, but, but not fully, perhaps, so.
Col. C. Matt Ryan:
So thanks for that. One thing I should add that is actually pretty exciting that I left out. We are also within just months of being able to transition for the first time, from the Air Force being reliant upon the Navy to do all our work for us. So the 4/45 in just a few months, will become the lead V and V organization for F 22 builds for the fighter in a box for F 22 the fighter in the box is just the model of the virtual weapon system that you’re integrating with JC. So that’s a first step for the Air Force to move away from being totally dependent upon the Navy to get our work done. So that’s very exciting. And then shortly thereafter, we will also be handing off the lead system integration role from the Navy to the software engineering groups on the Air Force side as well for building and integrating or not building, but for integrating those new raptor builds that are coming from Lockheed Martin for the fab. So we will become self sufficient in that respect, and that it’s good for the Air Force and the Navy that’ll allow the Navy to focus on getting Navy platforms integrated with JC while the Air Force focuses on Air Force platforms.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
So it’s a perfect. Segue into a follow on that I had, which we like to talk about, what is JSE as these sites and it’s, it’s not necessarily a site, it’s not a it’s not a simulator. It’s a simulator. Could be a portal, you know, through which you connect with with JSE. But in addition to those, those sites that we can that we can see and that we can get in a cockpit. I think part of the JSC current capability includes some of those things that you mentioned, the developers and the 4/45 the swigs in the Air Force Sustainment Center, the Navy weapons modelers, their their development lab at Pax River. But then there’s one more piece of this too. It’s the IC and the IC modelers. So I think that the JSC current capability, we need to think of it not just as as those, those sites where we’re able to put people in cockpits, where we’re starting to be able to do tests, where we’re able to do integration, but it’s that whole ecosystem that that that feeds it? Any comments on that?
Col. C. Matt Ryan:
Yeah, absolutely. The stakeholder map for JSC is vast. So we’ve got modelers, developers, integrators, system engineering activities happening across numerous sites for the Air Force and the Navy, industry partners have a role to play as well. Of course, we only have two platforms in a box today, that’s F 35 and raptors, so Lockheed Martin has been heavily engaged with that. However, the Navy is well on their way to an E 2d platform in a box. So you’ve got an industry partners they’re working with, and then we’re also bringing folks into helping us build out the environment itself. So there’s niche capabilities that, you know, we therefore saw the Navy just we don’t really have game there. A really good immediate example would be the weather service. We have farmed that out to folks who do that for a living, and they’re helping us build that model so that we can have much higher fidelity representation of weather in the future, so that as you have a model sensor consuming the environment, that electromagnetic spectrum is now being impacted by a much more highly representative weather model. So there’s a number of activities where we have to have various stakeholders in play, and then, as you said, we’ve got a lot of different touch points with the intelligence community as well, so that we are bringing in our best of breed models of the threat as well into the environment that has already been given The seal of approval from the intel community,
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
I think we’ve got a pretty good understanding of where we stand now with with JSC. So I’d like to spend probably the rest of the time moving into the future and talk more about where where we’re going. And you gentlemen have hit on a number of these topics, but I’d like to just ask broadly how we’re synchronizing across the services. We’ve got different government governance processes. We’ve got, you know, two different services and their acquisition leaders represented here and there. There’s another service in this United States, navy, very tightly coupled in here. So how would you assess we’re synchronizing across the services at this point with the capability Corey, you made some comments about your interaction with t2 and his program office. What’s your view on our synchronization at this stage?
Col. Corey Klopstein:
Well, I mean, I think it’s been a great partnership to date. You know, as I talked about earlier, we are part of the the existing leadership team and those discussions, but also we are working to establish the specs and standards with T two’s team to be able to bring space effects into JSE. That is an effort that’s going on right now. We’re funding, we are looking at building out a potential prototype going to the future to be able to leverage the work that’s been going on with grid. So the partnership that we have with T two’s team has been fantastic, and the work that we’re also doing to try to integrate with the Navy has been very positive. So I think the coordination across the cross services, from my perspective, has been very good. I know the t2 wants to, wants to get us more involved as much as possible, and we’re doing everything we can to make that happen.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
Yeah and we absolutely need to have the Space Force involved and in the environment in order to to accomplish the mission. T2 What’s your view on the synchronization, you have a lot of touch points with our Navy partners as well, and how we’re working together and and how we have that set up right now.
Col. C. Matt Ryan:
Yeah, I think we’ve had a excellent working relationship with the Navy. We’re not a joint program for everyone in the room who hears us talking about all these services getting together. There, but we have a very collaborative working relationship with the Navy and with corey’s team on the Space Force side as well. So you know, we’ve established different governance documents at different levels, all the way from having a single CCB that the Air Force and the Navy chair together all the way up to a two star level forum where we get together with the Air Force and the Navy to talk about, hey, what priorities, what challenges are in front of us? How can we help each other out to be successful together and to make sure that we’re in sync up and down that chain, one of the big things that we use to try and keep synchronized between the services and also between developers and requires is our JSC Users group, and we bring in all flavors of users into that. So we’ll have folks from the test center there, folks from Afro tech there, opt out for Nautic, the schoolhouse, you know, Air Force schoolhouse, from weapons, school program offices come there. So a variety of different interests who have in mind those different use cases that we kind of talked about for JSC, they all have an opportunity to come in and tell us, hey, this is what I need JSC to do for me. And then our lead Match com, which is ACC, has done a really good job of establishing governance so that they can, frankly, be that filter for us as developers, to say, this is the priority right now is where I need you to focus your resources. Even though you may have 1000 voices yelling at you about that, they should all be number one, right? ACC is the one helping filter and go, Well, this is going to be your actual one through five, or, you know, whatever the case may be. So it’s working pretty well. Obviously, we’re still standing up these processes. It’s a brand new program, so we haven’t got a lot of reps through the system yet, but we’re we’re refining things and getting more and more efficient.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
And very much appreciate your your focus on the the end user. But I would like to ask both you gentlemen, you know, for, probably, for your services, what would be the biggest needle mover for, for for JSC, for being a part of the program, being in this environment,
Col. Corey Klopstein:
I think, for the for the Space Force, one of the things that you know we, we are coming around to understanding is as our threat environment evolves and the space domain evolves, and the requirement of the service to actually gain and maintain space superiority to ensure that the joint force is successful, there are a lot of different things that we’ve got to do, from a test training standpoint, that we’ve never done in the past. If I could just talk about tests in particular, there are system performance parameters that we have not had to gather on our systems, that we are going to have to do going forward. We’ve got to make sure that our systems can survive in a threat environment that we haven’t had to consider in the past. And so gathering quantitative data that is, you know, representative of our systems that we can that gives us the confidence level that the systems can perform in this threat environment is something that we’ve got to do going forward. And when you look at whether or not we can do those tests on orbit or in a live environment, which is what we would prefer to do, there are a lot of things that would prevent us from being able, being able to do that, whether that’s cost, OpSec, safety, you name it. And so what we’re we’re coming to the realization of is you look at three different aspects of tests, whether that’s a live test, hardware in the loop chamber on the ground, in the synthetic environment, you’re trading between these three things at all times, and trying to understand what is the most efficient way to gather the data to prove the success of your system in that environment. And so for us, you know, the the percentage of things that we can prove in a live environment is is much lower than 50% I can’t say the exact percentage, but it is. It is definitely much lower than than 50% so that high fidelity synthetic environment for the Space Force is going to be vital for us to prove the systems can can work the way that we expect them to, so that, from a Space Force Generation standpoint, our our leadership, can present these forces to a combatant commander, and that person can, with confidence, take that system and put it into their own plan. So, so for us, the needle mover would be that we have a high fidelity synthetic environment that is representative of all of our systems, and get the red threat models in there. And then the next step would be that we’ve got that integrated with the other domains, so that we can help the other domains prove out. So that is something that is, you know, a long pull for the Space Force and something that we know that we need to partner with the JSE program office to help us get to where we need to go.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
Yeah, I think at the beginning I mentioned the initial one of the initial benefits of JSE being that inability to scale from few V few live tests to the system level. And at that time, we were thinking about that. As a system of multi ship, F 35 certainly today we’re thinking about this as a system of multi service, multi domain capabilities to close kill chains. And, you know, I think it’s very clear that you’re focused on, and we all need to focus on back to that integrated capability assessment in this environment to get us where we need to be. And I also think we need to just keep in mind that there’s a real synergy when you pursue test and training capability together in this environment. So t2 anything to add to that question of needle movers for the service, certainly one of them is the DevOps pipeline, getting up and running I mentioned earlier that will change the game for us across the board.
Col. C. Matt Ryan:
I would say program offices planning up front and baking in up front that they’re going to use JSC, which would be in a, you know, in accordance with the cdgm that the chief sent. So kind of should be doing it, but it’s not for free, right? Like, again, JC is not something that is low cost. It takes real resources to do this. So you’re having weapons system teams that are having to make real trade offs on, do I buy something else to put on the ramp, or do I invest in JC? And that’s not necessarily the easiest discussion to have amongst yourselves, right? But planning that up front, and planning in particular, for the concurrency aspect of it. And I would say one of the big things that does concern me, and this would be an area for industry partners to tackle with us and to join with us on, is if you are one of those builders of a model, whether it’s a sensor model, a weapon model or an aircraft model, if we could break the link between hardware dependency and your models so that every time you roll an OFP, I don’t have to throw my cockpit support rack into the trash can. Cockpit support rack is what runs the fiab, that would be a huge game changer for the Air Force from an affordability perspective, right? If I’m always getting rid of the tech stack when I chase concurrency on the aircraft, you can see how the costs wildly ramp right, very quickly. So I personally have a field that maybe containerization techniques are going to be the way out of the woods on this. But certainly want our industry partners to be thinking that, hey, as we come to you and we tell you, hey, we want you to build this model for JSC, please be thinking about the tail and how we maintain concurrency, because, you know, we’re going to ask you could update that thing every year or so, right? And we’re going to dump another OFP onto the aircraft. I need to be able to bring that into JSC as well. And I can’t afford to always get rid of my tech stack every time I do that. So that would be a significant needle mover and enabler for the program. Okay, thanks.
Col. Corey Klopstein:
And if I could just add for, you know, for the Space Force, what I’ve been trying to communicate to industry is, you know, along the lines of what t2 is talking about, think about how your capabilities are going to integrate into our architecture. How Think ahead on what are the standards that we’re going to define? How do you take those standards and how do you modify your systems to be able to come in? Because those are the obstacles we’ve got to overcome to ensure that we got the right integration. I know that we’re going to need industry participation when it comes to high fidelity environment for the Space Force to be able to bring in realistic models and make them as realistic as possible. We don’t want to necessarily have to build those in house, if that’s if it’s not required. And so how do your capabilities integrate into what we’re going to build out? Is going to be crucial for us going forward.
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
Perfect. And you gentlemen, answered the last question I had for you, which was, what would you tell industry about? JSC, so I appreciate that and that. That being said, we are down to our last couple of minutes, so I want to offer you both the opportunity to just make a brief closing comment. If you have anything else for for the panel. Corey, why don’t you go and start.
Col. Corey Klopstein:
Well, I think, you know, I hit on most of the key points from the Space Force perspective. But you know, I do want to emphasize to industry and frdcs and you are, except the partnership that we’ve started with, t2 I think is only going to continue and broaden going forward. The Space Force needs to provide space effects to the joint war fighter, to ensure that joint war fighter can validate in their training events and their exercises, whether or not they’re going to be effective. The Space Force also needs a high fidelity environment to be able to validate not just our system performance in the threat environment that we anticipate, but also our tactics, and validate our tactics. And so thinking of those two things and understanding what has been done already from the JSC Program Office and the investment that’s been made from the DOD to ensure that we’re tightly integrated. Going forward, we are looking to be able to prototype and partner with T two’s team to leverage that work that’s been done and potentially build out the Space Force synthetic, high fidelity, synthetic environment that. Need, and so we’re looking forward to continuing that partnership. And hopefully t2 is good with that too.
Col. C. Matt Ryan:
I think he is due to absolutely. So I guess I would wrap it up this way. I mean, when I hear our senior leaders this week, from general Alvin down to some of the other panels where they talk about force design and they talk about the the areas of focus right now, like generating readiness and developing capabilities and those sorts of things. JSC is in the tin ring for all of that. I don’t see the Air Force doing force design without a tool like JSC in the future. So when the chief talks about that we need to go and explore how to do unmanned man teaming. JSC is already working toward that right now. That is something that you can go and explore, and you can run tons of reps on it to go see what works what does not work, right? So it’s an excellent tool for something like that in the experimentation space, when we talk about mission readiness that general Alvin talked about during his opening remarks, there are just some things that you will not accomplish from a mission readiness perspective, for an air crew member with the tools that we have at our disposal right now, there are certain things that you cannot get after in live fly. There are some things that you cannot get after synthetically that you must do live fly right, the orchestration logistically of getting sorties generated, getting into the air, and getting everybody in the right place at the right time, and doing it in adverse weather and at weird times of the day, you just kind of have to go do that right and sweat and do it. But there’s other aspects of decision making, mission management that you can’t really simulate or do live fly, and we don’t have simulators that are capable of doing it. So again, I think that’s a JSC niche capability that we’ve got to get after if we’re going to be able to really achieve mission readiness. And then when I look at development of weapons systems and getting after test capabilities, again, there are aspects that we just cannot do anywhere else, other than something like JSC. So obviously, I’m here saying JSC is the most mature thing and that we should continue to invest in it, but there are just pieces of that that we will never do as a nation. So we’re either going to continue to have it be a gap and ignore it, or we’re going to go all in and invest in JSC and continue to grow it and mature it and bring more and more weapon systems in to integrate with it, so that we can close that gap and make sure that not only are we mission ready to employ weapon systems, but we’re developing the best weapons systems to put in those hands of the operators that we possibly can
Maj. Gen. Scott Cain:
Well, I hate to try to close it up after Both of those comments, because they were excellent. But unfortunately, our time is has come to an end here. No, I couldn’t agree with you more t2 on what we’ve heard here from the chief staff on generated readiness developing people, as well as capability, developing capabilities, and up to the DoD level, this capability certainly makes our war fighters more lethal, and we’ve seen them come out of that with the confidence that they need out of our training environments, we’re showing how it can accelerate capability development and making us a more credible force as well. So certainly aligns with the priorities of our department and our services, as well as being, like I said, up front, you know, on par with the other transformational capabilities we’ve talked about during this, during this AFA, So gentlemen, I do look forward to working with both of you and with our Navy partners as we move forward, and perhaps the next time that we get you On stage, we have more of those where we’re going in the where are we now? Discussion for JSE, thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Applause.