The Ministry of Defence's Joint Sensor and Engagement Networks Integrated Project Team (JSENS IPT) has confirmed that the first Anchor Milestone has been successfully completed for the Land Environment Air Picture Provision (LEAPP) programme.
This is the first of three such milestones in the contract and they mark the planned completion of significant activities within the programme schedule. The LEAPP team, led by Lockheed Martin UK – INSYS, signed a contract in 2008 to provide the British Army with a situational awareness and battlespace management capability.
LEAPP will provide a near real-time air picture to the Land Commander, which requires data to be distributed around the battlefield with the minimum of delay. In order to achieve this, LEAPP will be making use of the FALCON tactical trunk network.
FALCON is due to come into service in 2010, just ahead of LEAPP; the challenge was to determine as early as possible whether the LEAPP solution would interface successfully with the proposed FALCON services.
The JSENS IPT recognised the importance of this challenge and plans were put in place to conduct early de-risking tests to assess whether LEAPP would work over the FALCON communications network. As a result, an Anchor Milestone was placed into the contract to ensure that this testing was achieved by the required point in the programme.
The purpose of the tests was to gather as much information as possible about how the LEAPP data flowed through the FALCON emulator.
Although neither is yet fully developed, a version of the LEAPP software was produced during the Assessment Phase and installed on a test environment in the LEAPP system integration lab; this was connected to a FALCON emulator that simulated the data latency and bandwidth that is expected to be provided by FALCON.
The FALCON emulator forms part of a synthetic environment developed by QinetiQ and provided to the LEAPP programme by the IPT. This environment will be used throughout the LEAPP programme as a means of stimulating the LEAPP system and providing a simulation of the FALCON network.
It will allow the LEAPP Integration and Test team and JSENS IPT to verify that system requirements have been met before conducting field trials with real equipment and personnel.
The test was completed successfully over a period of two days, witnessed by both JSENS IPT and Lockheed Martin representatives. The data was carefully analysed with a test report prepared and submitted to the IPT.
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