Command Profile: MSIAC

Written by Marty Kauchak

MSIAC delivers long-term and immediate help to the community.

Modeling and simulation is a hot commodity within the Department of Defense. The department’s core competencies in M&S are rapidly expanding beyond training into acquisition, experimentation, medical sciences and other missions. To support DoD’s insatiable appetite for M&S, the Modeling and Simulation Information Analysis Center (MSIAC) continues to provide routine and urgent subject matter expertise across the department’s M&S portfolio. Much to the benefit of the broader interests of the M&S community, the center’s helping hand is also offered to support academic and industry members.

TWO CONVERGING CHAINS OF COMMAND

The Alexandria, Va.-based center was chartered in 1999 in response to the growth of DoD’s investment in M&S. MSIAC, generated by the combining of the existing Defense Modeling, Simulation and Tactical Technology Information Analysis Center and the Modeling and Simulation Operational Support Activity, continues to provide much soughtafter oversight and expertise to the ever-expanding M&S portfolio.

While MSIAC is under the oversight of DoD, it is operated by McLean, Va.- based Alion Science and Technology. Alion is in the ninth year of a 10-year contract that is expected to be recompeted later this year.

Alion’s onsite staff has used over 180 subcontractors through the years to support its programs. The MSIAC subcontractor roster is a Who’s Who List of the M&S industry. While the top five subcontractors by volume include Quantum Technologies, MTS Technologies, Systems Planning and Analysis, BRTRC, and Toyon Research Corp., industry heavyweights, including SAIC and Booz Allen Hamilton, also appear on MSIAC’s roster.

Dane Mullenix, director, MSAIC, modestly told MT2 that the center is the “411 and 911 service for modeling and simulation support to the M&S community.” If it has almost anything to do with M&S, “we’re here to promote it, leverage it and promote its reuse, interoperability, repurposing and reinvestment,” he pointed out.

MSIAC is one of 19 DoD information analysis centers (IACs) that provide expertise to the technology community. To support this very broad charter, MSIACspecific responsibilities include providing free help desk support to the community of practitioners and fee-for-service support for more complex issues.

The MSIAC chain of command is special but not unique within the department as it has a dual-track structure. One reporting structure reflects the center being one of 10 IACs under the sponsorship of the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). The DTIC director in turn reports to Al Shaffer, principal deputy director, Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology and Logistics). The center’s second chain of command has an interesting twist. MSIAC day-to-day activities also support the Modeling and Simulation Coordination Office, whose director also reports directly to Shaffer. “So the other chain of command, which is an M&S policy chain of command, also ends up on Al Shaffer’s desk by a different path,” pointed out Mullenix.

Each DTIC IAC is also required to have an executive committee. In the case of MSIAC, senior level governance is provided by the M&S Steering Committee, whose membership consists of proactive general officers and members of the senior executive service from training and other DoD disciplines that use M&S. The M&S Steering Committee is, in turn, supported by an M&S Integrated Process Team, consisting of O-6-level officers and their government GS-15 counterparts. MSIAC provides two levels of support to the M&S community. Help is as close as the keyboard or telephone at the contact information in the accompanying sidebar.

The center’s help desk is chartered to address initial requests for assistance from community members in academia, industry and the government. “The typical help desk request grants the authorized user up to four hours of free research,” pointed out Mullenix, who also said the help desk may support 600 to 900 requests annually. Yet, most issues within the community demand more complex solutions. MSIAC responds to this reality by delivering expertise and competencies through a fee-for-service structure. This contract vehicle structure has supported scores of M&S community offices since MSIAC’s inception.

The MSIAC director further noted that fee-for-service projects fall into two broad categories; the center’s core missions and technical area tasks (TATs).

One of the better-known core services is MSIAC-delivered M&S education. Under the coordination of the center’s M&S University, 10 courses are available for delivery when requested and funded by community organizations. One of the popular course offerings, which caught our attention when reviewing the university’s Website (http://education.dod-msiac. org/), was the DoD M&S Staff Officer Course. The next iteration of this course will be delivered at Dam Neck, Va., on March 24–26, 2009, and again at Wright- Patterson Air Force Base on May 5–7.

But it is the TATs that “are the meat and potatoes of MSIAC,” emphasized Mullenix. In late November 2008, there were 32 active TATs, many of a multiyear duration.

One TAT that demonstrates the scope and breadth of MSIAC competencies is the support of the Air Force’s Space Power Lab (SPL). “Our SPL team integrated a suite of models and simulations for the National Security Space Institute [NSSI] and created an electronic classroom and exercise center that is used to educate both space warfighters and space professionals,” said Mullenix. He continued, “The electronic classroom is used to teach the theory of space systems and space operations and becomes a virtual Air-Space Operations Center to run simulation-driven exercises and reinforce the theory with practical knowledge in support of course objectives.”

The center’s fee-for-service structure is also the mechanism for the center’s funding source. The MSIAC funding strategy is unique in the all-too-familiar world of DoD-appropriated annual budgets. The center’s funding mechanism follows what Mullenix refers to as the “OSD free-market model,” which provides a portion of the volume of its fee-for-service tasks. By any metric, the center’s funding stream is increasing, given the ever-growing demand for MSIAC expertise and competencies throughout the community. “All trends are northbound. Both the contract at large is expanding; demand for the core free services as well as the fee-for-services is very much on the upswing,” pointed out Mullenix.

MSIAC also operates the Defense Department M&S Resource Repository. The MSRR System, comprised of five nodes, provides retrieval of metadata descriptions of modeling and simulation resources. Data providers include the DoD system—the services and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The resources can be sorted and delivered electronically as specified by the user.

FUTURE ISSUES

Despite impressive technical advancements, M&S continues to be a resourceintensive endeavor. The foundations of the art still require software development, material support, an IT and communications base, and other labor-intensive efforts. Mullenix provided his criteria for MSIAC’s success. “If we are successful as an IAC, it is because we played a significant role in making that taxpayer dollar go a lot further; otherwise, we would not have been in business.”

With respect to MSIAC’s near-term horizon, Mullenix links the center’s future to the growth of the M&S industry and DoD’s technical leadership in the field. “This will be a support organization accessible across the board—to government, industry and academia, and that will get more important every single year.” ♦

For more information, contact MT2 Editor Marty Kauchak or search our online archives for related stories.

MSIAC’s resources are accessible through:

MSIAC Modeling and Simulation
Information Analysis Center
1901 N. Beauregard Street, Suite 500
Alexandria, VA 22311-1705
USA

MSIAC director’s e-mail:
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http://www.dod-msiac.org

MSIAC Help Desk Phone
703-933-3323
888-566-7672
Fax 703-933-3325
E-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

HLA Help Desk
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TAT Coordinator
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