Architecting Systems-of-Systems for Operational Feedback: A Study of Army Infantry Training Analysis

Abstract

Army tactical units are best viewed as an acknowledged system of systems (SoS) that are in constant development and evolution. The constituent systems involve material, soldiers, and tactical procedures that combine to produce operational capability. Unfortunately, each of these types of systems follow a different development methodology and time-line and are rarely developed as a complete SoS. This paper identifies the challenges to the development of these SoS and the opportunities present within the current organizational context. Namely, this paper describes the necessity to reframe the idea of training as not only a developmental process, but as a formal part of the test and evaluation procedure within SoS development. We also present the results and insights gained from experiments aimed at gathering and fusing evaluation scores and performance metrics from two SoS training events. This effort demonstrates the inability to rely on human evaluators for precise or even consistent data collection on SoS and further illuminates the difficulty in obtaining objective measures of performance within the tactical environment. If SoS engineers and practitioners want to leverage the training paradigm for more formal test and evaluation feedback, significant efforts will be needed develop integrated and effective mechanisms of collection and analysis.