Bottlenecks in space weather model validation: Where do we stand and how do we move forward?

The rate at which we develop and update solar and heliospheric models has outpaced the rate at which we build our data and validation infrastructure. As a consequence, we end up with a bottleneck in advancing heliospheric modeling. The validation practices that rely only on selected events and time intervals, the usage of individually developed metrics, and a slow iterative process between developers and end-users all contribute to this bottleneck. These validation practices make a complete assessment of the "state-of-the-art" in space weather modeling difficult or even impossible. Here we present the activities of the Ambient Solar Wind Validation Team embedded in the COSPAR ISWAT initiative. Our mission is to provide the science community with an assessment of the state-of-the-art in solar wind modeling at Earth and other planetary environments. To this end, we are developing an open online platform hosted at NASA's CCMC for validating large-scale solar wind models by comparing their solutions with measurements from space explorers. The new online platform will allow the space weather community to test the quality of state-of-the-art solar wind models with unified metrics providing an unbiased assessment of progress over time. In this contribution, we will give a status update on our team effort, showcase the first version of the online platform, and outline future perspectives.