The revolution is coming!

Introduction

The American Revolution ended Oct. 17, 1781, when British General Lord Charles Cornwallis surrendered his Army at Yorktown, VA. Thus began the new republic, breaking from past traditions. The rebellious colonials achieved victory against a military force superior in training, equipment, and manpower. Most historians credit the American victory to a combination of innovative tactics, willpower, and the aid of outside interests. The enduring revolutionary form of government of the United States of America is a unique and unqualified success.

Revolutionary change in our Defense acquisition process is essential. Our systems continue to cost too much, take too long to develop, and-once fielded-often require immediate upgrading of obsolescent technology. But revolutions take time, effort, and money; and a successful revolution requires dedication and commitment at the individual level, as well as innovation, willpower, and dedication at the organizational level. Making precisely that point while addressing the Army's Simulation and Modeling for Acquisition, Requirements and Training (SMART) Conference on Jan. 28, 1999, BG Joseph Yakovac, Assistant Deputy for Systems Management and Horizontal Technology Integration, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology), said: "To make a revolution a reality requires an entrepreneurial spirit." This also applies to Simulation Based Acquisition (SBA). Like the willpower that drove the American Revolution, SBA can succeed in revolutionizing acquisition only if we have the desire and perseverance to make it happen.

Vision

We have a constant vision driving SBA. This vision was carefully crafted and approved in September 1997 by the DOD Executive Committee on Modeling and Simulation Acquisition Council with input from an industry steering group operating under the auspices of the National Defense Industrial Association. The vision is as follows:

An acquisition process in which DOD and industry are enabled by robust, collaborative use of simulation technology that is integrated across acquisition phases and programs.

Goals And Strategy

SBA is a strategy for change deliberately intended to satisfy three goals:

Substantially reduce time, resources, and risk associated with the entire acquisition process;

Increase quality, military worth, and supportability of fielded systems while reducing their operating and sustaining costs throughout the total life cycle; and

Enable Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD) across the entire acquisition life cycle.

The SBA strategy is driven by our belief that it is compelling that we meet these goals, that the effectiveness of modeling and simulation (M&S) applied to acquisition has already been proven, and that the technology is rapidly evolving to enable the requirements of this strategy.

The first two goals will result from the achievement of the third. IPPD evolved in industry as an outgrowth of efforts such as concurrent engineering to improve customer satisfaction and competitiveness in a global economy But DOD has not reaped the full benefits of IPPD because we do not have the tools to allow respective users to "touch and feel" the item until a physical prototype is built. SBA enables IPPD by providing a collaborative, virtual context for system development. The underlying key technology is the computer, which provides a dimension described by Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Paul J. Hoeper as "electronic agility."

This electronic agility is the enabling cornerstone of SBA, providing the following:

Concurrent consideration. As early designs take shape, concurrent consideration by the different functional areas to analyze the design in terms of training, force lethality, deployment, maintenance, man-machine interface, manufacturing processes, materials, environment, etc.

Rapid iteration. Because of the capabilities of simulation and computer technology, iterations of design trades can occur quickly and extensive evaluation of the trade space can occur before decisions are made. This is the power of electronic agility.

Robust assessment. The design trades include operational performance across a wide spectrum of scenarios, human interfaces, system-to-system interfaces, life-cycle sustainment, production materials, manufacturing processes, cost, etc.

Synthetic environment testing. The system is virtually "wrung out" in the computer before time and money are spent on physical prototypes. Hoeper has stated, "Whenever possible, we must reduce the need for costly, repetitive live testing."

Simply stated, when physical prototypes are built, SBA will provide better form, fit, and function the first time without expensive rework. As Dr. Jacques Gansler, Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Technology), said of SBA in the Feb. 1, 1999, issue of Defense News: [it] "gives you the ability to make lots of tradeoffs in cost and performance, early-on." Increased use of M&S by the U.S. commercial automotive industry, by the aerospace industry, and in Defense programs has produced dramatic results.

Roadmap

During the past year, DOD has developed a "Roadmap" for SBA-a list of recommendations for policy, education, technology development, and architecture designs for establishing SBA. The task force that drafted the document consisted of representatives from the military departments and Defense agencies. In addition, an industry steering group participated to identify the top priorities for SBA planning.

The Roadmap is undergoing extensive coordination within government and industry. Currently, a draft "strawman" implementation plan is used to assign responsibility and prioritize activities to establish SBA. The Roadmap and the draft strawman implementation plan do not contain all the answers. In fact, the precise templates and standards to implement SBA are evolving. We plan to have a series of preliminary and then follow-on SBA experiments to "build-alittle, test-a-little" to arrive at a common set of designs for SBA to be used throughout industry and DOD.

The essence of SBA is not limited to the technical environment, but includes the following:

The technical engineering environment exploiting the power of computer and simulation technology;

A reborn acquisition culture of new policy and regulation, direction, education, priority, and funding to take advantage of SBA; and

A new process bringing together the separate system development functional areas of government and industry into a seamless, smoothly linked, and rapidly operating team.

The technical architecture in the Roadmap identifies the following basic features of SBA: collaborative environments (CEs), distributed product descriptions (DPDs), a DOD and Industry Resource Repository (DIRR), and standards. A brief discussion of these features follows.

Collaborative Environment

A CE is an enduring collection of resources, people, processes, and tools assembled to attack a given problem. Basically, a CE exploits information technology to permit people to work together and share common information, models, simulations, and data in real time.

CEs are designed to create groupings of tools, people, and processes to foster reuse and interoperability. The intent is to be able to work across functional areas, across acquisition phases, and across programs.

Distributed Product Description

The simple definition of DPD is a 3-D representation of a system that combines data and other characteristics associated with a given product and its inherent interrelationships to its environment. This includes associated process data (e.g., system function, requirements, manufacturing processes, and cost data) and features such as user selectable views.

The DPD, which is the responsibility of the project/program manager (PM), is the authoritative collection of program information. Users could view the DPD as a one-stop shopping center for any information about a product. The DPD will include one or more system representations for others to use as they "play" the system in their simulations.

Interconnected via web technology, the DPD elements appear (to the user) to be a single, logically unified product representation. As a product develops during initial stages, the DPD associated with the product matures in parallel with it. These product representations within the DPD will enable IPPD and integrated product teams (IPTs). When provided the appropriate automated support tools and schema, the IPT members will have access to and work with the same information resident in the DPD.

DOD And Industry Resource Repository

The DIRR is intended to be a collection of pointers in a webtechnology-based, distributed repository of DPDs, tools, information, and generic infrastructure components for use within and reuse across programs-the union of capabilities provided by all CEs. The DIRR could be viewed as a card catalog. This virtual repository will be built on the existing Modeling and Simulation Resource Repository developed by the Defense M&S Office.

Standards

Certain formats are essential for interchange of information and interoperability. The Roadmap recognizes the need to establish an essential set of standards for M&S interoperability and reuse. The M&S community will need to develop a set of appropriate data interchange formats to support the interchange and flow of product information. The relationship among the key SBA architectural components is shown in the accompanying chart.

Service initiatives are underway to significantly improve SBA processes and understanding. Specifically, the Army has identified four "Flagship" programs for special attention and SMART application. They are the Crusader, Apache upgrade, Future Scout Cavalry System, and the Close Combat Tactical Trainer.

Program Assessment

The following questions can be used by individuals to assess progress in applying SBA principles to their programs:

Does the M&S plan address the full system life cycle, with reuse across phases?

Does the M&S funding profile support the M&S strategy?

Does the acquisition strategy call for a DPD?

Does the acquisition strategy place the DPD in the Modeling and Simulation Resource Repository?

Is the program a part of any CEs?

What M&S is leveraged from other programs?

Does the program leverage HighLevel Architecture and other standards?

Is interoperability outside the program a priority?

Is testing and evaluation integrated with the M&S strategy?

Has the program formed government/industry IPTs, including one for M&S? Are IPT members empowered to make decisions to take advantage of SBA technology?

Are incentives identified for industry to assist in, or develop, necessary products and services to support SBA implementation?

Does the acquisition strategy call for sharing M&S with industry (via IPPD) beginning as early as source selection and continuing thoughout the program's life?

Conclusion

We have the constant SBA vision, the architectural concept announced in the Roadmap, the developing implementation plan, and an emerging set of experiments to refine the concepts. We are preparing the appropriate educational and regulatory changes. The military Services are beginning to move ahead in their programs, and we have identified several necessary actions, ranging from leadership commitment to technology development. In addition, we have assembled a list of questions to assess progress toward SBA. Have we covered all the bases? Remember BG Yakovac's basic requirement for a revolution? Entrepreneurial spirit is essential.

I challenge you to look for opportunities to apply SBA, communicate your interest, devise new methods, bring in outside interests, and strive to break from past traditions. The SBA Revolution is coming. Are you ready to be one of the revolutionaries?

[Author Affiliation]

DR. PATRICIA SANDERS is the DOD Director, Test, Systems Engineering and Evaluation. She is responsible for ensuring the effective integration of all engineering disciplines into the system acquisition process, and for oversight of DOD's Major Range and Test Facility Base and the development of test resources such as instrumentation, targets, and other threat simulators. She chairs the Defense Test and Training Steering Group, the Systems Engineering Steering Group, and the Acquisition Council on Modeling and Simulation. Backed by more than 24 years of DOD experience in test and evaluation, modeling and simulation, resource allocation, and strategic planning, Sanders is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). She was awarded the 1998 A1AA DeFlorez Award for Modeling and Simulation in recognition of inspiration and relentless advocacy in implementing the disciplined use of modeling and simulation in the DOD weapon systems acquisition process. She has a doctorate in mathematics from Wayne State University and is a graduate of the Senior Executive Fellow Program at the John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.