Impact Assessment Modeling for Defensive Counterspace (IAM4DCS)

The U.S. Military relies extensively on space assets to support intelligence, surveillance, communications, and targeting. Effective defensive counterspace (DCS) to protect and defend those space assets begins with the ability to maintain space situational awareness (SSA). The detection and discrimination of spacecraft events has moved from low-level alarms to the application of data fusion across multiple levels to provide a holistic view of SSA. However, the effectiveness of such a system is limited by the ability of the multi-sensor data fusion models to accurately characterize the causal and temporal relations that result in observed situations or threats. Currently, the JSpOC operators lack the tools necessary to construct and evaluate such models, leaving a gap in impact assessment capability that reduces the analysts ability to determine appropriate responses to space warfare events. To address this gap, we propose to design an Impact Assessment Modeling for Defensive Counterspace (IAM4DCS) development environment to support the construction, visualization, and evaluation of space-related courses of action and impact assessment models. Fully integrated impact assessment models will provide the operator with an essential tool for analyzing appropriate response actions in DCS operations. BENEFIT: We see direct application of the proposed effort to the development of decision aiding systems for enhancing space situation awareness and supporting counterspace operations. In addition, the proposed effort will provide enhancements to our COTS AgentWorks agent development toolkit via the incorporation of the Level 3 data fusion processing and inferencing components of the proposed system.