Distributed Tests: An ARMY Perspective

At the heart of Network Centric Warfare is the ability for all assets on the battlefield to communicate and coordinate their actions. Therefore, as these systems are being developed they must be tested and evaluated together along with other assets in a networked environment. The key requirement to conducting this type of test and evaluation (i.e., distributed testing) is having the necessary expertise to combine networking, security, high performance computing (HPC), and simulation experience as needed. The army began preparation for testing in a distributed environment more than a decade ago when the Army Test and Evaluation Command created the virtual proving ground. An outgrowth of this technology investment was a series of increasingly complex distributed test events or exercises whose purpose was to provide technology integration points and demonstrate and document the capabilities and methodologies for conducting distributed testing. The experience gained in performing these exercises over the past ten years, raises important questions regarding interoperability of network-centric assets, performance of spatially separated systems (especially those involving hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) assets) and high bandwidth requirements such as video and audio streaming feeds. This paper seeks to expound on a few of these issues as observed from the most recent tests as observed from the US Army Redstone Technical Test Center (RTTC). The latest exercise, Distributed Test Event 5 (DTE-5), occurred in August/September of 2005