Systems 2020: Strategic Initiative

Abstract : The Department of Defense (DoD) increasingly faces a mix of relatively foreseeable and unforeseeable threat and opportunity profiles. This means that DoD technological superiority relies on rapid and assured development, fielding, and evolution of progressively more complex and interoperable defense systems. Meeting these challenges requires DoD to design and build an entirely new class of adaptive systems that allow the Department to operate with far greater speed and agility. Mr. Lemnios, the Director, Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), requested a study of systems engineering research areas that enable agile, assured, efficient, and scalable systems engineering approaches to support the development of these systems. This report addresses the four highest-potential research areas determined by the study: Model Based Engineering (MBE), Platform Based Engineering (PBE), Capability on Demand(COD), and Trusted System Design (TSD). It elaborates each research area, characterizing them in terms of current state of the art and state of the practice, and identifies the most promising research topics. It then proposes next steps to create a DoD-wide Systems 2020 initiative based on a coordinated set of high-leverage, game-changing activities comprising systems engineering research, technology maturation, and pilot-based transition into practice.