4.2.2 Family-of-Systems Architecture Analysis Technologies

The United States Department of Defense (DOD) transformation initiatives have the potential to significantly improve operational effectiveness and efficiencies by having the right information at the right time at the right place to make critical time-sensitive warfare decisions. Realizing these operational benefits requires interoperability among complex families of systems. New computer-aided analysis technologies, methods, tools and simulation environments are needed to enhance understanding of the complex behavioral relationships among thousands of entities to 1) support DOD acquisition decisions to evaluate alternative Capability-Based-Acquisitions (CBA) 2) evaluate relative merits of multiple concepts of operations feasible in complex scenarios. This paper describes a set of executable model abstractions and a set of analysis technologies needed to build Family-of-Systems architecture analysis tools and the simulation environment. It proposes a CBA system engineering process linking the tools supporting these abstractions, analysis technologies and artifacts captured according to DOD Architecture Framework (DoDAF) standard.