Decision Support Tools for Capability-based Systems Engineering

There is hardly a design problem more technically challenging, more politically charged, and more critical to the future of our nation than missile defense. The complexity of the problem demands systems thinking. Engineers, managers and policy makersneed to consider not just the individual elements of the system, but how they interact to form an organic whole. To address this challenge, Information Extraction and Transport, Inc. (IET) proposes to leverage our expertise in building intelligentdecision aid systems and capability-based systems engineering to develop Systems Engineering Lifecycle Toolbox (LIFT) for missile defense. During Phase I, we will demonstrate the technical feasibility and the utility for capability-based systemsengineering in a suite of software tools, firmly grounded in Bayesian decision theory, to support the process of comparing and evaluating alternative system designs with respect to how well they meet technical objectives and goals given potential adversarycapabilities. During Phase II, we will design and implement the fully functional LIFT system. The result of this Phase I effort will be the analysis, design, and preliminary implementation of functionality that provides automated support for the processof setting technical objectives and goals and evaluating alternative system concepts against projected adversary capabilities to determine how well they meet those objectives and goals. The resulting technology will be applicable to markets that deal withlarge-scale diagnostics in uncertain environments (e.g., aircraft maintenance, remote facilities management, factory maintenance, and real-time component monitoring), object recognition tasks in uncertain environments (e.g., data fusion, entitydiscrimination, and site monitoring), and event predictions in complex and uncertain environments (e.g., identification of potential terrorist events and control of system inputs).