Abstract

Engineering expertise alone used to be sufficient to inform whether a Department of Defense (DoD) weapon system would perform its tasks and meet requirements. More recently, these weapon systems have many more capabilities and consequently are extremely complex. With more capability, however, come more subsystems that must meet their own requirements. There is then a need to understand the performance, reliability, integration, and interactions of these subsystems early in the weapon system’s development before large corrective costs manifest. The complexity arising from these integrated and interacting subsystems and larger systems can no longer be adequately informed by engineering expertise alone. To make informed decisions on these increasingly complex systems, a culture shift within DoD acquisitions must occur so that it moves from a culture reliant on engineering judgment to one that is information-based.