In February of 2009, our unit performed a Systems Engineering {SE} Self Assessment using the Air Force Systems Engineering Assessment Model (AF SEAM}. The AF SEAM consists of 190 SE best practices spanning the following ten SE Process Areas: Configuration Management, Decision Analysis, Design, Manufacturing, Project Planning, Requirements, Risk Management, Sustainment, Technical Management and Control, and Verification and Validation. During the SE Self Assessment, we graded our unit on a pass/fail basis for each SE best practice. The SE best practices are split into Specific Practices and General Practices. The former only apply to one of the ten SE Process Areas, while the later apply to all ten SE Process Areas. The unit's score for each SE Process Area is an average of the percentage of passing Specific Practices and the percentage of passing General Practices. Our unit received passing grades for Configuration Management, Manufacturing, and Sustainment; and failing grades for Decision Analysis, Design, Project Planning, Requirements, Risk Management, Technical Management and Control, and Verification and Validation. In addition to grading the unit's SE based on best practices, the SE Self Assessment collected the participants' comments. This report is an analysis of these comments; the intent of this report is to capture useful comments and distill them into actionable findings. Analysis of the SE Self Assessment uncovered 120 key findings that fall into 20 SE problems. In an attempt to hone in on the most pressing SE problems, each problem was evaluated based on the number of findings per problem, the feasibility of solving the problem, and the potential gain for solving the problem. As a result of this evaluation, the top SE problems facing our unit are as follows: inadequate communication, insufficient training, and unclear roles and responsibilities. In order to address these SE problems, this report recommends the following: Inadequate Communication: The unit should matrix four people into the Development Squadron covering the following disciplines: Configuration Management, Information Assurance, Requirements, and Test and Evaluation. These Systems Engineers would report to the Engineering Division Chief, but they would work with the Development Squadron on a day to day basis. Insufficient Training: The unit should pursue an aggressive training program to improve general and SE knowledge. The following courses and presentations should be developed: Unit 101 as a newcomers orientation, Intro to the Systems Engineering Plan and Intro to the Systems Test Plan to socialize these important documents, Integrated Product/Process Team (IPT) Training to improve our teaming skills, Eight Step Problem Solving Method as a Decision Analysis tool, and AF SEAM Mastery as a way to use the model to teach basic SE principles. Also, the unit leadership should encourage personnel to enroll in SE certificate and masters programs. Unclear Roles and Responsibilities:The unit should assign a SE Process Champion to each of the ten SE Process Areas. These champions would be the focal people for improving each area. Also, a SE Process Improvement Lead should be created. The SE Process Improvement Lead and the SE Process Area Champions would work towards the goal of achieving passing marks in the next SE Self Assessment held in February, 2010. Note: All of the material contained in this report has been scrubbed to remove references to people, as well as project names. For example, a specific hardware intensive project is described as "hardware project" instead of its name. Other generalizations include the following: software project, technology demonstration (tech demo} project, component, contractor, and FFRDC. The reader's patience is appreciated when these sanitization efforts sometimes result in incongruent phrases. A note on tense: This paper uses the first person tense. This is intentional. I am a member of the unit studied, and thus I stand to benefit or suffer from the consequences of any implementation suggested in this report. Exclusive use of the third person would imply a distance and impartiality that does not exist.

M.Comm. / In hierdie studie is daar gekyk na aspekte van bestuur in stelselingenieurswese. Ondersoek is ingestel na wat stelsels en stelselingenieurswese is, en waarom die bestuur van 'n stelselingenieursfunksie anders is as die bestuur van 'n funksionele lynfunksie. Sekere metodes en hulpmiddels is ook bespreek wat die projekbestuurder kan help in die uitvoering van sy taak. Hoofstuk twee handel oor stelsels en die begrip stelselingenieurswese. Hierdie hoofstuk dien as agtergrond vir hoofstukke drie en vier, wat handel oor bestuursaspekte in stelselingenieurswese. Die volgende afleidings oor die eienskappe van stelsels word in hoofstuk twee gemaak • 'n SteIsel bestaan uit verskillende komponente 'n Stelsel het 'n inset, uitset, en beheermeganisme Die komponente van 'n stelsel is op 'n funksionele wyse van mekaar afhanklik. Die eienskappe en gedrag van elke komponent in die stelsel het 'n irrvioed op die eienskappe en gedrag van die stelsel as 'n geheel. Daar is 'n spesifieke doelwit of funksie wat deur die stelsel bereik moet word.

An objective method for assisting decisions regarding allocation of resources, particularly public sector resources, was developed based on systems engineering principles. Systems engineering documents from the first phase of the systems process were prepared. Random allocation simulations were completed to establish a baseline for comparison with empirical information. Simulated allocations showed that the number of decision makers was a much more important factor affecting the amount of resource allocated than was the number of potential allocation categories. Simulation also showed that allowing decision makers to establish a range of acceptable allocations speeded a consensus allocation process. Decision maker's preferred allocation ranges were used as a fuzzy number preference functions, and a method for combining opinions to get consensus based on fuzzy set methods was proposed. Indices describing amounts of consensus based on fuzzy preferences were developed. A field experiment was designed based on principles of human decision making processes. Subjects answered three different questions using three different methods of assessing acceptable allocation ranges. Assessment methods included direct assessment, assessment using decision trees, and assessment using linguistic equivalents of fuzzy numbers. Decision makers rated each of the assessment methods regarding honesty, comprehensibility, and ease. Analysis of results evaluated which of the three methods tested resulted in the largest amount of consensus allocation and which method was the most highly rated by decision makers. The method based on linguistic equivalents of fuzzy numbers gave the largest amount of consensus allocation, with the decision tree method as a close second. The method preferred by the decision makers was the decision tree by a large margin. The fuzzy consensus indices worked well to give information on amounts of consensus and to identify decision makers whose opinions did not contribute to consensus. The paper concludes that the concept of developing group consensus allocations for public sector resources is a valid one, and that refined fuzzy linguistic methods or decision trees may be an appropriate tool in developing those allocations.

No description available.

My thesis is that practical language support can be provided for Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) for Application-Service Provision (ASP), which is better than that provided by pre-existing languages in that: it provides greater assistance in expressing conditions that mitigate the risks inherent in ASP; and disputes related to agreements expressed in this manner may be more easily resolved in so as to respect the original intent of the parties. I support this thesis by establishing requirements for SLAs for ASP based on an account of a typical ASP infrastructure and business model. These identify the particular risks inherent in ASP, permit comparisons between ASP SLA languages, and guide the development of an abstract, extensible, domain-specific language, SLAng. SLAng is defined using a meta-modelling approach that allows a high degree of precision in the specification of its semantics, traceability from SLA to language specification, and the testing of the language and SLAs to ensure they capture the original intent of the parties. SLAng supports the expression of mutually-monitorable SLAs, for which the determination of compliance depends only on events visible to both client and provider of the service. I demonstrate that such SLAs are the most monitorable possible in a typical ASP scenario, given current monitoring technology, and describe an approximately-monitorable constraint on the accuracy of evidence used to administer such SLAs. SLAng is shown to be of practical use in a case study, evaluated against the original requirements, and compared with pre-existing languages. The evaluation of SLAng is enhanced using metrics developed to assist in assessing the contribution of a domain-specific language specification to encoding the meaning of statements in that language.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The Department of Defense is continuously trying to improve the product development effort for its weapon systems. As the complexity of those systems increases, so does the importance of the test and evaluation process. All Services have been victims of poor performance in the independent Operational Evaluation of their respective weapon systems. With the drive to deliver products rapidly to the Warfighter, the prospect for success in Operational Test is reduced. Years of neglect and funding reductions have resulted in a decaying test infrastructure. The acquisition community's failure to consistently apply lessons learned and best business practices ensures repeating the mistakes. The US Navy is embarking on an aggressive six-year development effort to retrofit the aging High speed Anti-Radiation Missile with advanced technology and net-centric enabling systems. This Sea Power 21 weapon will require a test strategy that can effectively verify and evaluate product maturity before independent operational testing. Applying best business practices, lessons learned, and understanding the current state of affairs with respect to the range infrastructure, the Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile Test and Evaluation Integrated Product Team can develop a test approach to mitigate the risk of operational test failure.

The build cycle of a first in class combat ship takes about six years. During that timeframe, systems are being designed, installed, and tested, but, until the ship is in the water and tested at sea trials, it is not known if the ship is fully integrated and will actually work. As time progresses, integration problems become harder and more expensive to solve. Every time a new system is added or upgraded, there may be interference from another system that was not anticipated. It is important to test and verify each system, but there is limited time and resources to do so. By successfully planning and performing systems integration at the correct time of the acquisition cycle, it is possible to reduce the chance of system failure. This thesis explains and establishes a process for designing and building a fully integrated combat ship by first defining systems integration for the customer and the shipbuilder and explaining why performing systems integration is important.

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are of much interest to both the research community and the military because of the potential to establish a communication network in any situation that involves emergencies. Examples are search-and-rescue operations, military deployment in hostile environment, and several types of police operations. One critical open issue is how to route messages considering the characteristics of these networks. The nodes act as routers in an environment without a fixed infrastructure, the nodes are mobile, the wireless medium has its own limitations compared to wired networks, and existing routing protocols cannot be employed at least without modifications. Over the last few years, a number of routing protocols have been proposed and enhanced to solve routing in MANETs. It is not clear how those different protocols perform under different environments. One protocol may be the best in one network configuration but the worst in another. This thesis describes a study of those protocols that are best from a DoD perspective. These wireless mobile networks were simulated under different mobility and traffic scenarios to evaluate their performance. The results showed which protocols performed better under several relevant scenarios and exposed a number of design flaws.

The objective of this study is to develop a statistical model to calculate the effectiveness of an airborne jammer on analog communication and broadcast receivers, such as AM and FM Broadcast Radio and Television receivers. During the development the required power margin in dB, or equivalently, the required linear ratio, between the jammer power and the carrier power at the target receiver input was first determined. Subsequently, using probabilities that the jammer power will exceed the target signal's carrier power, the required power margin was calculated. This power margin was determined by statistical techniques to predict the propagation characteristics of communication and broadcast signals, such as Log-Normal Shadowing, and Small-Scale Fading. From the model, it was determined that it is difficult to achieve high probabilities of exceeding the required jamming margins with a single jammer. Hence, the use of spatial diversity jamming is recommended, that is, using two or more jammers spaced sufficiently far apart from each other, such that their jamming signals at the targeted area are de-correlated due to the differences in their respective angles of arrival.

Boost-phase intercept of a threat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is the first layer of a multilayer defense. This thesis investigates the requirements and limitations of the U.S. space-based ICBM defense against North Korea, Iran and China by introducing an ICBM trajectory prediction, selecting an orbit for exoatmospheric kill vehicles (EKV) and developing a hybrid guidance algorithm. The prediction of the ICBM trajectory takes the rotation of the earth and the atmospheric drag into account along with the gravitational forces and thrust. The threat ICBM locations, specifications and capabilities of the EKV and EKV carrier, and the capabilities of the space launch vehicle are analyzed to determine an appropriate orbit for the space-based intercept. The pursuit guidance, proportional navigation guidance and bang-bang guidance rules and their performances are investigated and simulated for three example ICBM threats in three-dimensional environment. The simulation results performances are compared and analyzed for minimum miss distance, intercept time and total command effort. The guidance rules are combined to meet the mission requirements, resulting in a hybrid guidance algorithm, which uses different guidance rules for different stages of a boost-phase intercept scenario.