In July 2007 QinetiQ and Boeing opened ‘The Portal’ in Farnborough. This new centre offers an advanced experimentation and analysis capability to Ministry of Defence and industry. The Portal is a jointly-owned asset of Boeing Defence UK Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Boeing Company, and QinetiQ.
The state-of-the-art centre will enable customers to explore and understand implications of proposed network-enabled systems in a real time, dynamic environment using the latest in modelling, simulation, analysis and experimentation. Concept war fighting customers can test logistical requirements across a wide range of existing and future operational settings and against a variety of threats. Experiment designers can create an optimal environment hosting multiple concurrent activities to compare the effectiveness and survivability of competing systems, test future scenarios, and assess potential solutions before they are delivered to the front line. Coalition war fighting interoperability issues can also be addressed by operators participating with live assets and in virtual simulations.
“We are delighted to be partnering with Boeing on this exciting new venture,” said Graham Love, QinetiQ’s Chief Executive. “The Portal will allow customers to explore many alternative scenarios in a fully immersive and interactive environment, and to see the effects of introducing new technologies to support current systems and platforms in order to optimise design concepts and performance.”
“Together, Boeing and QinetiQ offer customers the ability to draw from the capabilities of each company,” said George Muellner, president of Boeing Advanced Systems. “The Portal will enable us to support our customer’s decision-making processes by helping them to explore their options, evaluate alternative solutions, minimise risk, and reduce cost and development time.”
The Portal’s capabilities support the UK MoD Industrial Strategy and Defence Technology Strategy, which recommend UK suppliers invest in the tools and technologies to enable future military hardware and software solutions to be assessed in a variety of operational environments.
Boeing and QinetiQ will link their respective networked demonstration and experimentation capabilities from any location and can use the network to develop solutions in the United States, the UK and Australia.
QinetiQ’s Unified Experimental Services Testbed features networked nodes across the UK in multiple domains including land, missile defence, air and sea. Boeing’s Laboratory Network links more than 700 Boeing labs including the Systems Analysis Laboratory in Brisbane, Australia as well as US government labs and industry partners.
The 6,000-square-foot facility features multiple labs, viewing areas, syndicate rooms and a state-of-the-art presentation and audio-visual suite that can link to an additional 14,000-square-foot office space and up to 50,000 square feet of additional area for large vehicles or mobile facilities such as a tented headquarters.
The Portal supports all major simulation software systems and uses the latest Dual- and Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® central processing unit technology. Significant secure storage also is available along with a scalable bandwidth link up to 32 Mbps in size that can securely connect The Portal to other QinetiQ, Boeing, industry and MOD facilities in the UK and around the globe. Connection to the Joint Multi National Interoperability Assurance Network for MOD-sponsored programs also is possible.