AFRL uses new Information Transfer Agreement to share software with industry
NewsMarch 14, 2017
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Aerospace Systems Directorate reports that it has used Information Transfer Agreements (ITA) to transfer its Advanced Framework for Simulation, Integration and Modeling (AFSIM) simulation and modeling tool to 80 industry partners for development and evaluation.
The software covers domains from subsurface to space and can be used to assess how military systems function throughout the course of a mission. Users can manipulate the abilities and interactions of the virtual participants as they travel through space and time through constructive, virtual, and mixed constructive/virtual engineering to mission-level analytic simulations. The AFRL created AFSIM as a flexible software-simulation tool to rapidly represent advanced technologies and technology concepts for both government and industry developments that were often difficult or impossible to accurately represent with existing legacy tools. AFSIM is intended for use in the research and development, operations analysis, and experimentation communities.
An ITA is a newer type of technology-transfer agreement that the Air Force is starting to use in order to share government-developed software -- such as executable files or source codes that are related to design or manufacturing activities -- with external, non-Department of Defense (DoD) partners. Such partners may include state and local governments, academia and industry, depending on the distribution statement applied to the technology being transferred. For AFSIM in particular, the software can only be shared with industry partners due to its distribution limitations.
These newer agreements allow industry to have complete access to the software, saving all involved parties time, money and resources. For example, the AFSIM ITA helped create a common framework where all collaborators performing engineering to mission-level modeling and simulation for R&D could engage. Without an ITA, the government would need to establish a contract in order for an industry partner to use government-owned software tools; at the end of the contract, the software would either be returned to the government or transitioned to another contract. For users, this option makes it challenging to both maintain and remain proficient in tools that are nonaccessible. More importantly, transitioning advanced concept models to a contract often results in using tools with older, less widely known programming languages.
