The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP), a precursor to the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), will launch in October 2011. NPP will carry the 22-band Visible/Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) together with four other sensors. VIIRS is slated to replace the 5-band Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), the workhorse polar-orbiting imager for more than 30 years. The technology improvement from AVHRR to VIIRS is extraordinary, an aspect that is both exciting and challenging. Many operational systems (e.g., weather forecasting) were trained and now rely upon the steady AVHRR data, so new characteristics in their input data may introduce unexpected behavior. Therefore, to help ensure the viability, utility and accuracy of the NPP operational products, the JPSS Program has assigned validation responsibilities to a team of community scientists. The Land Validation Team is charged with validating Environmental Data Records of the VIIRS Vegetation Index, Surface Albedo, Land Surface Temperature, Surface Type, and Fire Product, as well as the Surface Reflectance Intermediate Product. The Land Team has worked for several years in cooperation with NASA's Land Product Evaluation And Test Element (PEATE) in prototyping and refining its validation techniques, often using NASA's MODIS data as a VIIRS proxy. This work led to a set of operational concept documents and validation rehearsals in the mid-2011. This presentation will describe the operational validation concepts, the latest results from the rehearsals, and the early results (as possible) from actual on-orbit NPP VIIRS data. We will particularly describe our attempts to develop a semi-autonomous validation infrastructure that eventually will have little reliance on traditional large field campaigns and other very laborious and expensive validation approaches.