Integrated Missile Defense Planner Algorithmic Architecture
Summary:
MDA-funded TechFinity has developed software that evaluates a missile threat and helps users decide which defense assets, in which locations and configurations, would be best for deflecting a missile attack or minimizing damage. MDA funded the technology through a 2003 MDA SBIR Phase II contract for its potential in improving missile defense planning and management. Users in the fields of logistics, transportation, and aviation also might find TechFinity’s central technology beneficial, and the company continues to refine its technology and consider routes to commercialization.
Technology Description:
TechFinity calls its MDA-funded software “Defense Planner.” The product is part of a larger suite of defense-related applications that the company is developing—with the eventual goals of integrating all the applications, enhancing their real-time information capabilities, and further automating their functions. TechFinity is not alone in developing such “decision-support” tools. But the company’s innovation lies in its algorithmic approach, its focus on distributed computing, a flexible and modular architecture, and integration with a real-time sister application.
The company’s current vision is for Defense Planner to be used for organizing, planning, and optimizing the location of missile-defense assets such as ships, ground-based shooters, sensors, and related equipment—given the potential of incoming threats. The tool can run scenarios based on enemy missile inventories and possible trajectories and then generate likely outcomes and optimal placement of missile-defense assets, displaying results in an interface that includes a map.
Defense Planner relies on numerical methods for its algorithms, while competing defense-planning applications use techniques known as Monte Carlo methods. The numerical-method-based algorithms—which have been challenging to develop, according to the company—allow Defense Planner to produce results in a matter of minutes. Algorithms that rely on Monte Carlo methods could take hours to produce a result—since they can rely on several thousand samples of scenarios to generate a solution or to recommend an action. TechFinity’s numerical method uses only a handful of sample scenarios and then generates a weighted average to produce an accurate result quickly. Company researchers said speed and accuracy—not just accuracy alone—are important for military applications.
Existing defense planning tools may use a single “probability of kill” metric as a measure of the quality of the weapon-target assignment. TechFinity’s innovative algorithms perform an analysis of the battlespace to generate a distribution of the “probability of kill,” which can extend the window of opportunity for engaging and destroying threats. This feature is currently being tested in Battle Manager (another TechFinity product) and eventually will be available to the Defense Planner.
A distributed-computing approach for Defense Planner means that each key process of the application can run on its own machine. Instead of all processes running on a single computer, they can all run individually on separate machines on a network—with the machines working concurrently to solve a problem fast. Additionally, the flexible, modular nature of Defense Planner means that users can swap databases in and out as needed to represent different elements of the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). The tool, therefore, is not limited to use with just one element or component of the BMDS.
MDA Origins:
TechFinity received a 2003 MDA SBIR Phase II contract for this technology, and the company also has worked on several related Phase I and Phase II MDA SBIR contracts. MDA has funded TechFinity technology for its potential in improving planning and management of missile defense resources. Since missiles of increasing capabilities are already a major feature of battlefields, a critical need exists to provide a capability to evaluate the best use of air and missile defense (AMD) elements, such that their positioning provides a defense that meets or exceeds a commander’s campaign objectives. The task is extremely complicated and entails multidimensional considerations, not only in the space-time domain, but also in the “internal” domain, which includes weapons effectiveness, enemy threat lethality, friendly asset value, asset hardness, and enemy and friendly inventories. The scope of such work is too large to be effectively explored by semi-automated search methods that rely on human-intensive evaluation. MDA, therefore, has sought to automate various processes.
Spinoff Applications:
The algorithms and features at the heart of Defense Planner could be applied to other fields in which users need to plan, schedule, and understand lots of resources and assets—managing them to solve problems with optimal and efficient solutions. For example, TechFinity has received federal funding for a project investigating use of their technology in a medical application. Such an application might involve an automated system that could take data from different input sources (medical sensors, for example) and then evaluate information and perform preliminary diagnoses. Company officials said that additional applications are not limited to the medical realm. Information users in the fields of logistics, transportation, and aviation also might find TechFinity’s central technology useful.
Commercialization:
TechFinity has designed Defense Planner to work fast, but it remains essentially a planning tool. Another company product—Battle Manager, also developed with MDA SBIR funding—is being designed as more of a real-time management tool that military leaders would use for commanding a battle. TechFinity officials said Defense Planner and Battle Manager would eventually be integrated to allow real-time sharing of data between both systems. Using data from Battle Manager means that Defense Planner will not rely on generic models; instead, it will use actual real-time Battle Manager data to do planning.
Ongoing challenges for the company include enhancing real-time functionality and automating certain features of Defense Planner to require less user intervention. The company continues to seek new customers and also remains open to outside investors.
Company Profile:
TechFinity is focused largely on software engineering and analysis for aerospace systems. Key domains of the company's expertise include: national/theater missile and air defense; battle management, command, control, and communications (BMC3); ground-based, space, and airborne systems; radar systems; and communications systems. Key disciplines of the company include system engineering; modeling/algorithm development; computer/communications network performance analysis; and software development. TechFinity supports major contractors as a junior partner on a long-term basis, from proposal through system deployment, providing niche technical support to fill key needs. TechFinity's client list includes: a top aerospace firm in national/strategic missile defense; a major aerospace company on an aircraft network communications program; and Dynetics on missile/air-defense programs. TechFinity employs 16 people (most of whom have fifteen or more years' experience) with graduate degrees in physics, math, computer science, or electrical engineering. Staff is located in the Los Angeles area, with work being performed at the TechFinity offices; at customer sites; in Orange County, CA; in the Washington, DC, area; in Huntsville, AL; and in Colorado Springs, CO.
Contact Information:
H.K. John Armenian
TechFinity, Inc.
4505 Las Virgenes Rd., Suite 117
Calabasas, CA 91302
Tel: (818) 878-9341
web: www.techfinity.com
email: hkarmenian@techfinity.com
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