Orchestrating the Development of a Complex System of Systems: Systems Engineering Tools and Methodologies

Abstract

Acquisition efforts are under increasing pressure to deliver systems rapidly and at lower cost while providing enhanced performance capability. This is happening in an environment where research and development budgets are decreasing across the Department of Defense (DoD), the acquisition workforce is rebuilding, and the DoD is looking to rebalance warfighting portfolios. This has been compounded by an extremely dynamic environment of fiscal change and uncertainty imposed by significant budget cuts and sequestration impacts in the recent past. The overall trend of DoD budgets has been declining. The president s fiscal year (FY) 2015 budget recognizes the fiscal imperative of deficit reduction, reducing projected defense budgets by about $113 billion over five years compared to levels requested in the FY2014 budget (DoD, 2014). As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the DoD budget has been declining from approximately 15% in the mid-1950s to around 3% today. The growth in the DoD s costs under the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projection of the base budget is somewhat less than the CBO s (2014) projection of the growth of the U.S. economy, decreasing slowly from 2.8% of GDP in 2015 to 2.5% in 2025, and 2.3% in 2030. One outcome of the fiscal pressures has been an increase in defense acquisition efforts that are focused on the rapid development and fielding of an integrated system of systems (SoS) capability. Many of these SoS leverage mature systems and sub-systems as constituent systems but do not contract directly with industry to deliver the integrated capability. Elements of the DoD acquisition workforce are therefore taking on increasingly technical roles and responsibilities as the lead integrators for complex SoS. It should also be noted that the acquisition workforce (AWF) has declined by more than 50% since the 1990s, while the value of Department of the Navy (DoN) contracting has increased by more than 50%.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 30, 2015
Accession Number
ADA623434

Entities

People

  • Carly Jackson
  • Richard Volkert

Organizations

  • Naval Information Warfare Systems Command

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Cyber
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Business Administration
  • Complex Systems
  • Configuration Management
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • Governments
  • Littoral Combat Ships
  • Model Based Systems Engineering
  • Naval Warfare
  • Navy
  • Reliability
  • System Of Systems
  • Systems Engineering
  • Systems Modeling Language
  • Test And Evaluation

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Naval Mine Countermeasure Systems Development.
  • Public Financial Management and Budgeting