TECHNOLOGY SURVEY AND ASSESSMENT FOR THE U.S.

ARMYS
OBJECTIVE FORCE WARRIOR PROGRAM

George Park
1
, Elizabeth Lu
1
, Mark Lester
2
, John Pye
1
, Randy Sullivan
3
, and Gary Riccio
1


1
Exponent
149 Commonwealth Drive
Menlo Park, CA 94087
gpark@exponent.com

2
Booz Allen Hamilton
121 South Tejon Street, Suite 900
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80903

3
The Wexford Group International
931 Front Avenue
Columbus, GA 31901

Abstract: The U.S. Army embarked on the Objective Force Warrior Concept and Technology Demonstration
program to develop a concept for a system of systems that could revolutionize Soldier and Squad operational
effectiveness in the areas of lethality, mobility, survivability, situational awareness, and sustainability. A central
element of this program was the identification and evaluation of technologies that could enable advanced operational
capabilities. To achieve this goal, the Army engaged a group of companies collectively known as the Wolfpack
and including Exponent, Booz Allen Hamilton, and the Wexford Group. This paper summarizes the process used to
identify and assess technologies, laying out a background of the Wolfpacks scope of activities and strategy,
describing its search approach, and finally discussing the assessment process. Examples from the ~1,000
technologies assessed are provided to illustrate this process.


1. INTRODUCTION

The goal of the U.S. Armys Objective Force Warrior (OFW) Phase I program was to develop and demonstrate a
concept for a revolutionary increase in the operational effectiveness of the Soldier and Squad through an integrated
system of systems approach to equipment, including weapons, power sources, body armor, sensors, medical
systems, etc. The OFW system would allow U.S. soldiers to see first, understand first, act first, and finish decisively
along a full spectrum of operations. To achieve this goal, the Army engaged a group of companies including
Exponent, Booz Allen Hamilton, and the Wexford Group, collectively known as the Wolfpack.
The OFW vision rests heavily on the incorporation of current and emerging technologies to enable advanced
capabilities. To meet this vision, Wolfpack conducted a six-month program to identify and recommend technologies
for insertion into OFW. A key element of Wolfpacks efforts was its scientific approach to technology development
which depends on (1) an honest broker perspective on technology assessment, and (2) collaboration between
scientists, engineers and users in an open and replicable assessment process. User representation was led by a
special group of former soldiers with personal experience in close combat operations, military technology
development, and in leading and fighting with a range of users from inexperienced combatants to elite fighting units.
This representation guaranteed that the best, most operationally relevant, technologies were considered and selected
for spiral development. The premise of this approach is that lack of vested interests in productization and open,
collaborative, multidisciplinary assessments are necessary to ensure that OFW would transition from Advanced
Technology Demonstration into procurement and fielding.

2. SCOPE OF ACTIVITIES AND STRATEGY

The OFW system will rely on high-impact technologies to achieve greater than twenty-fold performance
improvements in such areas as lethality, mobility, survivability, situational awareness, and sustainability. To fulfill
these needs, Wolfpack conducted a survey and assessment to identify and recommend technologies for integration
into OFW, as well as to track key technologies that may provide leap-ahead capabilities for follow-on efforts.

In order to manage this process, the broad scope of technologies of relevance to OFW was categorized into
eight general areas: Knowledge and Smart Systems, Human Perception and Performance, Netted Communications,
Sensors and Sensing, Soldier Protection, Load Carrying, Energy and Power, and Weapons, Munitions, and
Explosives. In order to both bound and direct these activities, a number of strategy elements were identified from
the outset, as shown in Table 1 below.

Table 1. Elements of the Technology Search Strategy

Strategy Element Description and Rationale
Wide net to identify technologies from
industry, Government, academia
In order to identify best-in-class technologies, a broad range of sources were
considered
Government R&D efforts as a baseline
Government is a significant player in many relevant R&D areas, and it clearly has a
more direct focus on soldier systems than other institutions.
Standardized definitions
In order to have a rigorous method of assessing technologies, standardization is
necessary in addressing both operational and technical assessment criteria.
Link with Life Cycle and Risk teams
Incorporation and future insertion of technologies into the system will affect fielding
and operational costs, production and performance risks, etc.
Documented process for transfer to
Government
Documentation is important so that the Government has an understanding of the
rationale behind technology choices.

3. TECHNOLOGY SEARCH AND ASSESSMENT APPROACH

Wolfpack has developed a process (shown in Figure 1) and a test-bed centered at Fort Benning (Georgia) to gather
data for the assessments. This framework begins with Technology Identification that considers the wide range of
possible technologies relevant to OFW. Technologies with a positive set of initial assessments may go through
Technology Search Events, Quick Looks, and Modeling and Simulation experiments (as defined in the following
sections) in order to capture additional data and experience to continually add to and refine the early assessments.



Figure 1. Technology Search and Evaluation Framework

3.1 Technology Identification

The technology search effort began with the identification of possible technologies suitable for insertion into OFW.
A wide variety of candidate sources were used, including the following:

a. Open Review - The Government-sponsored Open Review was held in October 2002. During the event,
numerous technologies from both Government laboratories and Government-sponsored research were
presented.

b. Broad Industry Announcement Wolfpack released industry-wide announcements in various media in an
outreach effort to the general Government, commercial, and academic marketplace. Recognizing the
potential value of the FedBizOpps registry as such a medium, Wolfpack issued a Broad Industry
Announcement in early October 2002.
c. Known Industry Contacts - All Wolfpack member companies have extensive knowledge and contacts in a
wide range of technology areas. d. Targeted Technology Needs Search - Using gap analyses and input from
operational experts, technical areas that required more targeted search efforts were identified.
e. Known Technology Focuses from the Special Operations Community - The Wolfpack has close ties with the
Special Operations community and leveraged the knowledge and experience of the communitys technology
evaluators who have been evaluating a broad range of technologies for operational insertion.
f. Literature, News, and General Technology Searching - Literature searches, targeted and broad web searches,
and cascading lead research were used to discover the state of the art and future of various disciplines.

3.2 Technology Search Events

Universities, companies, and government laboratories identified with promising technologies were invited to
participate in two Technology Search Events (TSEs) held during the weeks of 28 October and 21 November 2002 at
Fort Benning. The participating organizations gave presentations and hands-on demonstrations of their
technologies.
An assessment team of at least three members evaluated each participating organizations technology. At least
one member had a background in the infantry to ensure that operational issues were evaluated. In addition to the
formal evaluators for each technology, other members of the Wolfpack team (including both technologists and
operational specialists) as well as government representatives were in attendance. This mix supported discussions
and questions from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and perspectives in an open forum, providing helpful input for
the formal evaluators.
Each evaluator completed formal assessment forms that solicited inputs relevant to the attributes of
Fightability, Soldier Acceptability, and Technology Maturity (discussed further below). After the TSE, selected
technology area leaders compiled the individual assessments of each participant into a single summary assessment.
A decision was made to either eliminate a candidate technology or to move it forward into a Quick Look or
Modeling and Simulation experiment to further refine the assessment.

3.3 Quick Looks

The Quick Look (QL) process took the filtered set of technologies from the technology identification as input, and
conducted experiments to refine and expand upon the early assessments. This process placed these technologies in
operational environments where they interacted with other elements of the system. The QLs served as opportunities
for soldiers to evaluate Wolfpack concepts and generate early answers to important questions about operational
characteristics of technologies, as well as to foster innovation. The results of QL evaluations were used to support
and define subsequent experimentation and Modeling and Simulation activities.
The first QL took place at Fort Benning in the third month of the project and focused on Human Perception
and Performance as well as Knowledge and Smart Systems. During this event, a variety of information display
devices (including head-mounted displays and PDA screens) were operated in a nighttime environment to examine
issues of usability and performance. Second and third QLs took place in the fourth and fifth months of the project.
Successive QLs included technologies from a broader range of areas and, thus, fostered increasing consideration of
integration issues.
The QL provided a more sophisticated assessment of both technology/engineering metrics as well as higher
order operational/conceptual ones, allowing a more refined assessment of Fightability and Soldier Acceptability.
The iterative refinement of everything from assessment methods to metrics represents an important part of our
approach: any innovative system of systems requires the concurrent spiral development of component technologies
and of a test bed commensurate in scope and complexity to the system of systems under development. The
integration issues implicit in such development and assessment require an equally innovative multidisciplinary
approach to assessment that addresses the operational and programmatic, as well as the technical, challenges to
integration and fielding. As with the TSEs, QLs were open forums attended by a mix of technologists and users, of
Government and contractors, sufficient to address the broad range of integration issues. QLs thus were valuable to
analysis and trades during architecture development and design.


3.3 Modeling and Simulation

The Modeling and Simulation (M&S) team participated in the design of QL assessments because M&S depended to
some extent on quantitative and qualitative data gained from the QLs. M&S provides assessment data for situations
that are difficult or impossible to test in the real world, such as a theatre-wide campaign. It takes information about
parameters and model structure as inputs (for example, device power draw and weight from vendor data, TSE
evaluations, QLs, etc.), and provides outputs to support operational assessments of Fightability and Soldier
Acceptability. As technologists and operational experts formed opinions of a candidate technology, members of the
Wolfpack assessment team examined the technology from the M&S perspective, making judgments concerning how
the technology would be measured and possibly integrated into a simulation model for more extensive and
integrative analyses. Thus, for example, imaging sensor systems could be measured in terms of field of view,
resolution, spectral sensitivity, power draw, and weight. Prototype technologies built or acquired for QLs helped
ground model parameterization in something real, or at least realistic. This illustrates an important element of the
approach: a high priority was placed on utilizing prototypes in service of assessment. This represents a
fundamentally different use of prototypes than that of a company with vested interests in eventual productization of
a new technology. The prototypes developed for these purposes required only enough fidelity to show the art of
the possible and to address specific scientific, technical and operational questions. This allows us to conceive,
prepare, and conduct assessments as early and often as we are capable of building prototypes and putting them into
the field. This approach is revolutionary and arguably necessary to acquisition reform.

3.4 Evaluation Process Example: Optical Fusion

Technology search for Optical Fusion technologies were conducted in the following manner. Enhanced vision via
the fusion of image intensified (I2) and thermal (IR) imagery was identified as candidate OFW technology at the
governments Open Review in PM Soldier Sensors presentation of the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle. Further
technical information about this technology was collected during the course of the technology search, including a
presentation during a TSE by InSight Technology of their fusion system. Based on these efforts, assessments were
made regarding technical attributes, such as resolution of the thermal image and the overlay method of fusing the
thermal image onto the I2.
Experiments were performed on this optical fusion technology to determine its potential operational impact as
a function of the resolution of the thermal image. In the experiment, simulations of fused imagery were shown on
laptops to operators, who indicated whether they detected a target in the scene. In the course of the experiment, the
resolution of the IR component of the scenes was varied. The experimenters measured the change in the individual
operators probability of detection (Pd) as a function of IR resolution.
The Pd data empirically collected by the experiment were used as input into the Joint Conflict and Tactical
Simulation (JCATS) model to determine a corresponding individual operators probability of kill (Pk) associated
with the optical fusion system. By extending the model to include Call for Fire capabilities with non-organic
platforms, a corresponding Pk within an augmented unit was assessed. Figure 2 illustrates how this technology
flowed through the assessment process.














Figure 2. Optical Fusion Assessment Process

Tech Search
Review of Optical Fusion
techs from Open Review,
Tech Search Event, etc.
ENVG
Insight
Assessment:
IR resolution
Overlay method
Etc.
Experimentation
Laptop - based simulations
with varying IR resolution
M&S
JCATS scenarios with
Pd inputs
Assessment:
Pk for individual
Pk with non - organic fires
Assessment:
Pd(resolution)

4. ASSESSMENT PROCESS

The OFW Solicitation states the following: The OFW goal is to develop the Objective Force Unit of Action
warrior and small combat team system of systems that is lightweight, low power, fightable, overwhelmingly lethal,
maximally survivable, highly mobile, strategically deployable, sustainable, and cost effective by employing
emerging technologies that can demonstrate a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 6 or 7 (depending on the final
funding levels) by the end of FY06. To meet this objective, Wolfpack assessed technologies from the technology
identification effort, including those from the Open Review, to the following four categories of measures:

Fightability with regard to the operational characteristics
Technology Maturity with respect to the objective TRL of 6 in 2006.
Affordability of life-cycle costs
Soldier Acceptability of the weight, power, logistics, and training burdens of the technology

4.1 Fightability

Fightability evaluates candidate technologies on their ability to meet the operational needs of the soldier and small
unit. Seven sub-attributes comprise fightability: lethality, mobility, training, task organization and direction,
situational awareness, sustainability, and survivability. Candidate programs were evaluated on their merits to meet
the needs (as applicable) of each sub-attribute. Rankings are outlined in Table 2, below.

Table 2. Fightability Rankings

0 No applicability
1 Major modifications required to support
2 Minor modifications required to support
3 Meets needs
4 Exceeds needs

4.2 Technology Maturity

To be relevant to OFW, all technologies under consideration must be able to meet a minimum TRL level of 6 by
2006. There are two components in analyzing this attribute: the projected TRL in 2006 and the risk associated with
meeting that TRL. For this analysis, best practices from the risk management community were used to merge the
TRL and associated risk into a single Technical Maturity score; this is reflected in Table 3.

Table 3. Technical Maturity Score

Projected 2006 TRL
Risk Level 6 7 8 9 10
High 1 2 3 4 5
Med-High 3 6 9 12 15
Medium 5 10 15 20 25
Med-Low 7 14 21 28 35
Low 9 18 27 36 45

4.3 Affordability

Cost considerations include (1) expected final product cost, where equivalent technologies are compared to a
consistent standard of performance, and (2) expected life-cycle costs, specifically the cost to sustain the technology
(including maintenance and repair) where technologies are compared to equivalent life-cycle durations.

4.4 Soldier Acceptability

Soldier Acceptability addresses the burdens technologies place upon the soldier and small unit. The candidate
technology must meet Fightability capabilities while placing minimum burdens of weight, power, logistics, and

training. The solicitation states that the Objective Force Warrior will enable soldiers to conduct dismounted
maneuver with load bearing equipment and load not to exceed 40 pounds over the course of a 24 hr mission without
resupply, and must be sustainable within the Unit of Action, which has a requirement to operate for 72 hours without
resupply. However, due to the early state of OFW concept development, dividing the overarching quantitative
specifications of weight and power into sub-systems was not specifically considered. For example, it was not pre-
determined whether the standard-issue weapon should be assigned 5, 10, or 15 pounds of the 40-pound overarching
specification. Rankings of acceptability are given in Table 4.

Table 4. Soldier Acceptability Rankings

0 Unacceptable burden
1 Major burden
2 Minor burden
3 Meets acceptability
4 Exceeds acceptability



5. EXAMPLE ASSESSMENT

Using the criteria above, a template for assessing technologies was created. Nearly 1,000 technologies were
evaluated using this format. An edited example in the area of Human Perception and Performance is shown below.

One-Handed Tourniquet
U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research/WRAIR
6900 Georgia Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20307-5001

General Description
This one-handed tourniquet is a lightweight, double-looped tourniquet intended to stop serious
arterial or venous hemorrhage. Either the individual or a buddy can apply this tourniquet within
30 seconds. This tourniquet can provide effective care at all levels of pre-evacuation care.

Capability-Based Assessment
Use of tourniquets is a medical method or technique to create hemostasis during serious situations. These products
offer possibilities for an injured soldier or buddy to control bleeding that cannot be controlled by other means (e.g.,
pressure).

Capability Title Capability Description Assessment Source ID #
One Handed
Tourniquet
OFW soldier shall have a one handed tourniquet that permits
soldier to reduce or eliminate bleeding in an extremity by
pulling a pre-positioning band located in both upper arms /
legs. Tourniquet shall be embedded in the uniform.
!!!" CAT 1 FCS
Block 1 (Sustain-
ability - Treat on
the Move)
OFWC147

Maturity Assessment
One-handed tourniquets are currently being fielded to Special Operations Forces. Minor
improvements are needed for the lengths of the loops, to provide greater leverage to the
soldier when applied. Modifications can be ready in FY 2004.


Affordability Assessment

Criteria Assessment Rationale
S&T Cost to Complete $50K Although currently fielded, loop lengths need to be optimized.
Goal Product Cost $25 per item Costs are expected to decrease, as the product has relevance to other services.
Life Cycle Costs Low No maintenance; replacement necessary only in case of loss or damage.
Matching Dollar Ratio !!"" Multi-service interest.
Soldier Acceptability Assessment
Criteria Assessment Rationale
Weight !!!! Tourniquets are lightweight and can be compressed to fit in confined areas.
Power !!!! No power requirements.
Logistics !!!! Product has an indefinite shelf life.
Training !!!" Training is required.

Timeframe TRL
2003 7
2006 9