2023 Year in Review
SEI Support for Long Range Standoff Program Spurs New Engagements
In its ongoing engagement with the Long Range Standoff (LRSO) program, the SEI has contributed its technical acumen and in-depth experience in novel software verification analysis techniques to advance the mission of LRSO. The verification techniques the SEI helped establish have already provided rapid feedback to the government for its developers, ensuring swifter iterations and improvements to a highly complex software baseline.
The team’s tireless efforts have led to groundbreaking collaborative opportunities with the Air Force’s Safety Center.
David WalbeckLRSO Technical Lead, Advanced Deterrents Group, SEI Software Solutions Division
“It’s exciting to be the technical lead of a high-performing group whose impact spans multiple programs within the strategic domain,” said David Walbeck, the SEI’s LRSO technical lead within the Advanced Deterrents Group. “The team’s tireless efforts have led to groundbreaking collaborative opportunities with the Air Force’s Safety Center, establishing a first of its kind Summit for Nuclear Certification and placing the SEI at the forefront of verification and validation research in highly regulated environments.”
The SEI’s collaboration with the LRSO program has also spurred engagements with other advanced deterrent programs. These partnerships serve as a testament to the SEI’s capabilities and its potential for transformative impact. These opportunities promise a continuum of influence and advancements for years to come.
“The mission is urgent, and we have so much more to do,” said Stephen Beck, Advanced Deterrents Group lead for enabling mission capability at scale at the SEI. “I know that 2024 is going to be an incredible year for the program as we advance the verification methodologies for this critical domain and help to ensure the program remains on track for initial operating capability and for the nation.”
As an outgrowth of the engagement with LRSO, the SEI created a broad design of experiments grounded in a model problem: operation of vehicles in GPS-denied environments. The experimental design allows the SEI to do research with academia on sensitive national problems. The design has already enabled two research projects, one on large language models and another on formal arguments for large-scale system assurance. Future research based on the design could catalyze advancements in multiple domains of software engineering, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, navigation and timing, and heterogeneous computing, to name a few.
Photos: U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy
RESEARCHERS
David Walbeck (project lead), Stephen Beck
