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I'm really surprised on a forum like HN that there isn't more questioning of what the Joint Simulation Environment is really supposed to do and why the developm

I'm really surprised on a forum like HN that there isn't more questioning of what the Joint Simulation Environment is really supposed to do and why the development of a simulation should hold up the full production of a tactical aircraft. JSE is really interesting, it's meant to be a high-fidelity electronic warfare simulation with actual aircraft software in the simulation loop. The F-35 that's present in the JSE is the same code that is running on a real jet, with sensor models specifically developed by all the sensor vendors. All this is fed with the latest intelligence data on threat aircraft and emitters. The point of all this is, the US should be able to better develop the aircraft -- and other aircraft types -- in the future if it has a high tech digital testing ground that it can step through iterations with very quickly. As far as I can tell nothing like this has been done before so it's no wonder that it's taking a while. Here's a US Navy PDF briefing on the JSE: https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2018/test/Smith.pdf https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2018/te...

OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
> what the Joint Simulation Environment is really supposed to do It's for formal verification and validation (V&V). > why the development of a simulation should hold up the full production Why shouldn't it hold up production? The program has requirements for formal V&V that they haven't met yet. In theory, you could start production by accepting the risk that you might need to do some rework, but I don't know if that was even an option. > step through iterations with very quickly The argument for doing a simulation is to get higher fidelity. It doesn't really make the process any faster on its own. The simulations themselves take a trivial amount of time compared to the preparation and analysis. > nothing like this has been done before There's a lot of simulation in aerospace and defense. I don't know exactly how JSE compares in terms of extent and reliance on it, but it's not a completely new idea.
- euler_angles 6y ago
  The DoD has done a lot of simulations (some for the purposes of higher fidelity, but that's definitely not the only reason), but this is the first time it's truly tried to fold a simulation into the formal acceptance of an air vehicle, and committed this hard to high fidelity at scale.

OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago

> what the Joint Simulation Environment is really supposed to do It's for formal verification and validation (V&V). > why the development of a simulation should hold up the full production Why shouldn't it hold up production? The program has requirements for formal V&V that they haven't met yet. In theory, you could start production by accepting the risk that you might need to do some rework, but I don't know if that was even an option. > step through iterations with very quickly The argument for doing a simulation is to get higher fidelity. It doesn't really make the process any faster on its own. The simulations themselves take a trivial amount of time compared to the preparation and analysis. > nothing like this has been done before There's a lot of simulation in aerospace and defense. I don't know exactly how JSE compares in terms of extent and reliance on it, but it's not a completely new idea.

euler_angles 6y ago
The DoD has done a lot of simulations (some for the purposes of higher fidelity, but that's definitely not the only reason), but this is the first time it's truly tried to fold a simulation into the formal acceptance of an air vehicle, and committed this hard to high fidelity at scale.