Barone Consulting on Inc. Magazine’s 5000 most successful companies

Barone Consulting is proud to announce its inclusion on Inc. Magazine’s 2019 list of the top 5000 most successful companies in America. Every year Inc. Magazine publishes an annual guide to the 5,000 fastest-growing privately held companies in the United States. The application, evaluation and selection is a thorough and rigorous process where companies are inspected on their percentage of revenue growth from 2015 to 2018. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2015 of a minimum of $100,000. They must also be U.S.-based, privately held, for-profit, and independent–not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies–as of December 31, 2018. Barone Consulting has met and exceeded these criteria and has further been recognized as one of the 5000 most successful companies across the United States for 2019.

Barone Consulting has been providing the Department of Defense and Intelligence Communities with research and development program management for over ten years. It has expanded from its core business within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, into providing technical expertise to Air Force Research Laboratories, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and Special Operations Command. Members of Barone Consulting excel in subject mater expertise in critical areas including hypersonic technology, big data, cloud computing, command and control, urban warfare and electronic spectrum management. With these critical skills Barone Consulting supports the research and development efforts defining the future capabilities of the Department of Defense and intelligence communities capabilities.

Providing these capabilities while rapidly growing our company within the competitive defense industry is no small feat and it’s nice to be recognized by Inc. Magazine. We sincerely appreciate being on the Inc. 5000 but we won’t rest after receiving this award (www.inc.com/profile/barone-consulting). We are committed to turning the science fiction of today into the reality of tomorrow.

Revolutionizing U.S. Command of Space, the Next Military Frontier

With assistance from Barone Consulting teamed with Schafer a Belcan Company, DARPA’s Hallmark Program enters Phase 1, awarding contracts to eleven companies that are transforming how commanders manage space-based assets.

In shear volume, the Earth’s operational space domain dwarfs the oceans. Throw in thousands of objects hurtling at 17,000 miles per hour, and you have a situational-awareness and command-and-control nightmare. Given that complexity—and the growing importance of protecting U.S. space assets—DARPA, aided by Barone Consulting teamed with Schafer a Belcan Company, is developing a breakthrough approach known as Hallmark for the rapid acquisition and development of capabilities in this critical domain. In 2017, the Agency successfully completed initial research demonstrations for the Hallmark program and awarded Phase One contracts to eleven companies.

The ultimate goal of Hallmark is to arm U.S. commanders with new technologies for rapidly planning, assessing, and executing military operations in space. Hallmark is particularly innovative for being both a set of technologies and a framework, or “software testbed,” for developing new technologies to meet future challenges. The key to this agility and adaptability is ongoing, behind-the-scenes simulation and forecasting.

During the research demonstrations, military space operators worked through hypothetical scenarios involving U.S. space assets and evaluated what kinds of software tools and operating environments would be most useful in each case. The goal for each scenario: Chart only the most useful data path through a near-infinite cloud of inputs.

Hallmark is taking a multi-pronged approach to its research. The Agency has awarded Phase One contracts for the Hallmark Software Testbed (Hallmark-ST) to two teams. Hallmark-ST aims to build an advanced enterprise software architecture to facilitate a testbed for tools that will integrate a full spectrum of real-time space-domain systems and capabilities. The testbed would be used to develop a comprehensive set of new and improved technologies that can be spun off into near-term operational use.

Hallmark is also developing its first set of technologies to run through the testbeds. DARPA has awarded Phase One contracts for the Hallmark Tools, Capabilities, and Evaluation Methodology (Hallmark-TCEM) research thrust to eight organizations.

DARPA has awarded a second set of Hallmark-TCEM Phase One contracts to two teams to perform cognitive evaluation of the testbeds, tools, and technologies. By using cognitive evaluation, DARPA aims to help improve decision making by showing whether information has been effectively conveyed to operators, whether operators have been properly assigned tasks that contribute to understanding the situation, and whether given tools facilitate their ability to act on that information.

Subject Matter Experts from Barone Consulting will continue to provide technical SETA support to DARPA as the Hallmark program enters its next phase. Barone Consulting excels in test planning, management, and execution for command and control research projects like Hallmark.

About Barone Consulting

Founded in 2009, Barone Consulting provides technical assistance and systems engineering services to the Department of Defense and the intelligence community.

Barone Consulting is actively recruiting and encourages strong candidates with Top Secret security clearances, systems integration, flight test, and aeronautical engineering to contact us regarding DARPA opportunities.

DARPA Awards Reusable Hypersonic Aircraft Engine Development Contracts with Help from Barone Consulting

With the help of Barone Consulting, DARPA has awarded recently awarded contracts to Aerojet Rocketdyne and Orbital ATK for the Advanced Full Range Engine (AFRE) program.

The AFRE program aims to develop and demonstrate a new, full-scale, fully-reusable aircraft propulsion system that can operate over the full range of speeds required to enable future hypersonic aircraft platforms. (Aircraft are considered to be hypersonic when flying at speeds of Mach 5 or faster.) AFRE will explore a turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engine concept, which uses a gas turbine engine for low-speed operation, and a dual-mode ramjet (DMRJ) for high-speed operations. These two flowpaths are combined through the use of a common inlet and common nozzle.

Ramjets can operate at speeds above that of a gas turbine engine because they use the forward motion of the engine to compress the air instead of using the compressor stages of a gas turbine engine. Ramjets must slow the incoming air down to subsonic speeds before adding fuel and burning to produce thrust. A scramjet (supersonic combusting ramjet) is able to operate at speeds above that of a ramjet because the while the fuel/air mixture is decelerated, it remains at supersonic speeds while burning, allowing for the aircraft to flow at speeds faster than a ramjet would allow. A dual-mode ramjet is an engine capable of operating in a ramjet-mode at lower speeds, and in a scramjet-mode at higher speeds. However, the use of the forward motion of the engine to compress incoming air means that ram-type engines cannot operate at low speeds.

The fastest speeds at which gas turbine engines can operate is below the slowest speeds DMRJs can operate. This gap in operating regimes creates a major roadblock in the development of TBCC aircraft. Thus, the AFRE program will address key technologies needed to enable the extension of the gas turbine engine and DMRJ operating regimes, permitting transition from the low speed flowpath to the high speed flowpath. This effort will culminate in an integrated freejet test of the TBCC propulsion system over the full range of speeds required for low speed take-off to hypersonic flight. The AFRE program seeks to demonstrate the viability of a single integrated propulsion system to propel future hypersonic systems into our most challenging environments.

Dr. David Rosenberg, one Barone Consulting’s senior consultants, will continue to provide technical SETA support and subject matter expertise to DARPA as the AFRE programs enters this next phase. Dr. Rosenberg’s years of experience in combustion research, optical diagnostics, propulsion testing, and aerospace engineering have been particularly valuable to the AFRE program. Dr. Rosenberg has not only been monitoring the development of TBCC components within his fields of expertise, he has also provided valuable input into the development of new propulsion concepts. Barone Consulting looks forward to our continued involvement in DARPA’s AFRE program.

About Barone Consulting

Founded in 2009, Barone Consulting, provides technical assistance and system engineering services to the Department of Defense and the intelligence community.

Information about Barone Consulting can be found at www.barone.net

Barone Consulting Aids DARPA in Development of Reusable Hypersonic Aircraft

The next step on the road to reusable hypersonic aircraft capable of taking off from a runway, flying to hypersonic speeds, and then landing back on a runway is the development of combined systems that utilize gas turbine engines to reach supersonic speeds, and engines such as scramjets to reach hypersonic speeds. Barone Consulting provides Subject Matter Experts to DARPA’s Advanced Full Range Engine (AFRE) Program. The goal of the AFRE Program is the development, testing, and vehicle integration of these turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engines.

The AFRE program aims to develop and test key technologies, resulting in the ground-based testing of a full-scale, integrated system. If successful, these systems may be flight-tested in a future follow-on program.

About Barone Consulting
Founded in 2009, Barone Consulting, provides technical assistance and system engineering services to the Department of Defense and the intelligence community.

Information about Barone Consulting can be found at www.barone.net

Barone Consulting to provide technical support to DARPA Gremlins Program

DARPA has placed four companies on contract for the first phase of the Gremlins program, which will explore inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in volley quantities to saturate enemy defenses. The Gremlins program will employ a modified C-130 aircraft to launch the UAVs, which will then communicate their behavior for electronic attack and reconnaissance missions from standoff ranges. Upon the completion of their mission they will then aerially recover surviving drones for refueling and reuse. The four companies will design UAVs that are inexpensive when compared to other autonomous weapon systems, so that occasional losses would not compromise the overall mission. The program aims to develop affordable UAVs that could be reused as many as 20 times for dangerous missions in contested air space such as pre-attack reconnaissance and surveillance, as well as electronic attack to destroy or disable enemy communications, missile defenses, and battlefield networks. These UAVs would be capable of employing diverse payloads in volley quantities, and would have the advantages of small vehicle size, reusability, and limited vehicle design life.

Barone Consulting is very proud and excited to be part of this groundbreaking effort, which promises to make a fundamental shift in the notion of aerial attack. SETA consultants from Barone Consulting will be advising the government program leadership on the proposed technical approaches of the four companies. Barone brings experience in unmanned aerial vehicles, airborne network management, autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. We will be advising program management on these areas as well and providing programmatic support for execution of the Phase 1 contracts.

The program is named in homage to the 1948 XF-85 Goblin aircraft, which was developed as a fighter capable of deploying from and recovering to a strategic bomber to provide escort counter air capabilities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_XF-85_Goblin). Ultimately the Goblin program was abandoned due to XF-85’s shortcomings against other fighter aircraft and the high degree of difficulty in reconnecting the fighter with its carrier/bomber aircraft. The Gremlins program recognizes the inherent difficulty with aerial recovery of an autonomous aircraft, but will capitalize on technological advances of the last 50 years. With that said, recovering an UAV from a C-130 in flight is still understood to be “DARPA Hard”.

DARPA is pursuing the Gremlins program in three phases: system and technology design; preliminary design; and prototype flight demonstration.

This first phase of the program is expected to spend about $15.8 million among the four separate contractors. Ultimately DARPA wants a Gremlins flight demonstration by early 2020 to show the feasibility and potential of air-launched, recoverable unmanned aircraft.

Information about Barone Consulting can be found at www.baronedc.com

The original DARPA press release can be found at http://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2015-08-28.

About Barone Consulting

Founded in 2009, Barone Consulting provides system engineering and technical assistance services to the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. To find out more, please visit www.baronedc.com

Barone Consulting provides the experience critical to the success of DARPA’s Dynamic Battle Management program.

In February of 2014 the Strategic Technology Office within the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency decided to make a considerable investment to improve the DoD’s airborne battle management capability. Envisioned and managed by Dr. Craig Lawrence the program aimed to drastically improve the time critical situational awareness and decision-making tools utilized by Command and Control (C2) operators. To accomplish this the program, named “Dynamic Battle Management”, brought along the unique talents of Colonel Richard “Scotty” Wright (USAF Retired) from Barone Consulting to ensure they had a proper understanding of the challenges facing command and control operators.

All branches of the DoD have uniquely trained C2 operators. Key among them are the Air Battle Managers within the USAF who employ the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and the Naval Flight Officers of the US Navy’s E-2 Hawkeye fleet. These operators often describe their job as “performing air traffic control while people are shooting at each other”. Air Battle Managers and NFOs use a complex web of sensors, digital data links and voice radios to ensure the mission success of the US and coalition aircraft employed in military operations around the world. As C2 aircraft have modernized their sensors and data-links, their operators have become swarmed with the data available to them. The challenge of utilizing the data available form radar, air traffic control signals, and electronic warfare sensors on all networked aircraft is exactly what Dynamic Battle Management aims to solve.

DARPA has contracted with Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as key integrators for the program. They are developing mission planning, control, and situational understanding algorithms to enhance the C2 operator’s capabilities. Additionally they are researching the design of human-machine interfaces to make the operators more effective. Following this the Dynamic Battle Management team will build an integrated capability to manage air-to-air and air-to-ground combat and demonstrate that capability in large-scale simulation and live fly events. Fortunately for the program, Barone Consulting was available to guide them with subject matter expertise on these critical missions and technologies.

Founded in 2009, Barone Consulting provides system engineering and technical assistance services to the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. They provide a cadre of elite subject matter experts to the government in support of game-changing, cutting edge technologies that help performers bridge the “valley of death” between R&D and fielded tactically relevant products. To find out more, please visit www.baronedc.com.