Photo By Mark Schauer | U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) Data Processing Branch Chief Ashley Thompson...... read more read more
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Data is in a very real sense the chief product of U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG), and the post’s Data Processing Branch is the nerve center for reducing the enormous amount of data collected during tests on the post’s vast ranges.
From optical data to tracking radar data to ballistics data, testers rely on the branch and its chief, Ashley Thompson, to deliver the information leaders need to make decisions about equipment Soldiers will depend on.
Not all of the data collected is from routine testing, either.
“We also get the occasional weird thing that only comes every five or ten years, but it isn’t like a private industry business where we say we aren’t going to provide that to a customer anymore because there isn’t enough demand for it,” said Thompson. “If the Army needs that thing, we have to make sure we have the expertise and the tools to process the data. That’s hard when people retire and take that knowledge out the door: we have to be sure that even if we automate it, we understand how the automation works.”
In conjunction with the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) it is subordinate to, YPG is developing the local architecture and establishing data governance in advance of more practical case uses for artificial intelligence (AI) in support of the post’s test mission, and Thompson has extensive historical knowledge to optimize these efforts. The daughter of a Marine Corps veteran who served in Desert Storm, Thompson grew up in Yuma, graduating from Kofa High School. After graduating from Northern Arizona University, she began her YPG career in the safety office in 2008, then worked for Trax as an engineering technician supporting the automotive instrumentation mission. She left for a few years to work as an analyst for explosive testing at Redstone arsenal.
“We were blowing stuff up at China Lake and then mapping out all the pieces, kind of putting the pieces back into a model to see what would happen to different explosive magazines,” she recalled.
She returned to YPG in 2013 to get the post’s internal Sharepoint system up and running, and worked for the Resource Management Office and the post’s internet server team. She also worked as a program analyst in the Instrumentation Division and oversaw the post’s financial systems before beginning her current position two years ago.
YPG has an array of historical data on legacy systems that can be used to train models, and Thompson’s team has been utilizing it to make data processing significantly more efficient. A recent successful example involved developing a workable algorithm to help facilitate the acoustic trilateration of air to surface missiles and other helicopter rounds collected from arrays of microphones and hydrophones on the post’s highly instrumented ranges.
“We’re more than just dipping our toes into it at this point,” said Thompson. “We have been training some models and trying to automate some of the rote processes that the analysts are doing.”
Mortar lot acceptance tests another prime area for this sort of automation.
“We want to facilitate that real-time data, so we are working on a statistical model and build up infrastructure to get them that information immediately in the field,” said Thompson. “If there’s an issue with a particular set of data looking questionable, we would post-process it here.”
YPG has been setting up technical exchanges with other ATEC ranges, too, an effort Thompson is heavily involved with.
“We’re working with the other ranges to see what tools and infrastructure they are using and what models they are training,” she said. “Nothing is going to be identical between the ranges, but we can at least share the knowledge and tools that seem to work across the board.”
Thompson enjoys the mission and the community, and plans to stay for the long haul.
“I think I’m pretty much here. We have aging family here and I have siblings nearby, so it would be a hard sell to move away from this region.”
| Date Taken: | 02.19.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.20.2025 00:03 |
| Story ID: | 490499 |
| Location: | YUMA PROVING GROUND, ARIZONA, US |
| Web Views: | 215 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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