ACADEMIA

The Department of Defense announced that five winners have been selected for the eighth annual Department of Defense Modeling and Simulation (M&S) Awards. Acquisition: Joint Attack Munitions Systems (JAMS) Project Office, U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space. Team award for developing an innovative approach for simulation based acquisition. The team’s synergistic process of taking advantage of tri-service government technical expertise, developed over years of experience on legacy, as well as ongoing programs in an integrated product team environment to develop an integrated flight simulation and accompanying tool set, will reduce risk, lead to a better product in a shorter period of time and at a lower cost to the taxpayer. Analysis: Weapon Effects Analysis and Probability System (WEAPS) Team, Air Force Materiel Command. Team award for developing and maintaining a world-class software simulation tool that is highly valued by the warfighter and supports combatant command requests for campaign, theater, and engagement analyses of air-to-surface munitions effectiveness. WEAPS makes a critical contribution to theater-level models such as the Combat Forces Assessment Model and is a key tool in the annual Non-Nuclear Consumables Annual Analysis process. Test and Evaluation: U.S. Air Force Maj. Kelly A. Greene, Ph.D., Air Force Agency for Modeling and Simulation. Individual award for significant contributions to advancing M&S in support of test and evaluation (T&E). Greene innovated and transformed T&E at both the Air Force and joint levels, altering the use of live, virtual, and constructive distributed M&S environments in support of T&E. Greene is directly responsible for the largest progression of distributed T&E ever recorded in a single year. Training: U.S. Army Maj. Daniel P. Ray, Office of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff, G-2. Individual award for developing the “Every Soldier is a Sensor Simulation” to increase a soldier’s situational awareness on the battlefield. He took the concept from infancy to a low-cost working prototype in 90 days. Following the success of the prototype, he spearheaded further development, delivering a product that is being used to train thousands of soldiers that are daily having a direct impact on the Global War on Terrorism. Cross-Function: Training Improvised Explosive Device (TIED) Team, Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation. Team award for providing a safe and realistic training system to replicate the IEDs employed against coalition forces by insurgents in Iraq. The TIED Team, jointly with the U.S. Joint Forces Command, rapidly developed, coordinated, contracted, developed and fielded this crititcal capability to the warfighter. The annual awards recognize achievement in support of DoD M&S objectives. Seventy-nine nominations were received from across DoD. The awards will be presented to winners May 2 at the DoD Modeling and Simulation Conference in Baltimore, Md.