Mission/Charter/History

Mission

Achieve increased affordability, readiness, and effectiveness of tri-service aircraft through the joint coordination and development of survivability (susceptibility and vulnerability reduction) technologies and assessment methodologies.

Specifically, the JASP:

• Exchanges aircraft survivability information with the Services to increase the combat effectiveness of military aircraft in threat environments.

• Identifies, through coordination with Joint and Service staffs, aviation capability gaps that require aircraft survivability RDT&E and ensures that the gaps are addressed in a joint war-fighting context.

• Implements RDT&E that complements Service aviation survivability programs.

• Serves as an executive agent for the Survivability Vulnerability Information Analysis Center (SURVIAC), the repository for aircraft survivability information.

• Conducts Joint Live Fire (JLF) tests on aircraft platforms to quantify system vulnerabilities and verify survivability enhancements.

• Investigates and reports on combat damage incidents, through the Joint Combat Assessment Team (JCAT), to assess the threat environment for operational commanders and collect data to support aircraft survivability research and development.

• Interfaces with other DOT&E investment programs, the intelligence community, other federal agencies and industry to improve military aircraft survivability.

Charter

This charter establishes the roles and responsibilities of the Joint Aircraft Survivability Program (JASP).  The JASP promotes aircraft survivability to enhance combat mission effectiveness, improves the synergy and coordination of aircraft survivability improvement endeavors, and facilitates technology development and transition to weapon systems.

This is accomplished by ensuring that aircraft survivability research, development and test efforts, conducted by the Services and JASP, are coordinated to effectively meet Service requirements.  Aircraft survivability efforts include technology research, development, testing and evaluation (RDT&E), gathering combat damage information and modeling and simulation (M&S) support for technology development and acquisition planning.

History

A History of the Joint Aircraft Survivability Program Office (JASPO)

In 1971, the Joint Technical Coordinating Group on Aircraft Survivability (JTCG/AS) was chartered by the Joint Logistics Commanders (JLC) in response to high aircraft loss rates experienced during the Vietnam War. The JTCG/AS charter focused on susceptibility reduction (design characteristics which make an aircraft harder to detect) and vulnerability reduction (design characteristics which give an aircraft the ability to withstand a hit, if detected). Later, modeling and simulations for survivability assessment and establishing aircraft survivability as a design discipline became additional focus areas of the JTCG/AS.

As a coordinating group, the JTCG/AS has provided a forum for education and technical interchange between the services, in the pursuit of technologies and methodologies required to advance the state-of-the art for survivable aeronautical systems.

In 1984, in conjunction with the Joint Technical Coordinating Group for Munitions Effectiveness (JTCG/ME), the JTCG/AS established the Survivability/Vulnerability Information Analysis Center (SURVIAC), a widely used repository for survivability/lethality and combat data. The Joint Live Fire Program was also started during this time frame in response to a requirement from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) for more realistic vulnerability testing.

In 1985, the JLC established the Joint Aeronautical Commanders Group (JACG) and assigned them line oversight responsibility of the JTCG/AS. At this same time, funding for the JTCG/AS, which had come from the services, was consolidated under what is now the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (OUSD/DOT&E). The funding is used to conduct research and development projects that leverage service funding, and to provide for a permanent program office.

Since its beginning, the JTCG/AS has successfully worked to make aircraft combat survivability a design discipline. And in its desire to be even more efficient in its service to the acquisition community, in January 2003, the JACG signed a new charter establishing the Joint Aircraft Survivability Program Office (JASPO), replacing the JTCG/AS. The new organization expanded the JTCG/AS charter to include the Joint Accreditation Support Activity (JASA), the Joint Combat Assessment Team (JCAT) (formerly the Joint Service Air Defense Lethality Team [JSADLT]), and Joint Live Fire-Air Programs (JLF-Air), as well as additional missions. The JASPO consolidates responsibility for coordination, administration, planning and investment, and adds value to the end product for the aircraft survivability community and Department of Defense acquisition programs.

In May 2005, the JASP was re-chartered by the Service SYSCOMS, the USN Naval Air Systems Command, the USAF Aeronautical Systems Center and the USA Aviation & Missile Command.  The new charter was necessary as the JACG which held the JASP charter, was itself re-chartered to focus on logistics.  Logistics was inconsistent with JASP’s focus on research, development, test and evaluation.  The charter is available under the “About” menu item.

The JTCG/AS, and now the JASPO, have played a key role in the success of aircraft combat survivability in the years since the Vietnam War. The key to the program’s success directly relates to the understanding that aircraft not designed to survive in combat are not effective in combat. The JTCG/AS and JASPO have been cited by the Joint Logistics Commander (JLC), OSD, and others for being a truly effective organization that has carried out effective programs and made real progress in making our combat aircraft survivable against the changing threat.

Download PDF of JASP Charter