SoSWG status

[Jack Ring]

Judith and Alan,

I am inquiring as Co-chair, Autonomous System Evaluation WG, previously Autonomous Systems Test and Evaluation WG. A response by end-May, 2017 will be most helpful

Any insight members of your WG can provide regarding the following five questions will be greatly appreciated. If you have already addressed these questions please cite a source.

1. How can we know the relative contribution by any given constituent system in an SoS given a Mission/Usage situation and the intended effects by the SoS on that situation?

2. How might a contribution shift with modes of behavior of the situation? In baseball the relative contribution of the pitcher is probably higher than the relative contribution of the right fielder. However, this may be true on defense but not on offense (as batters).

3. How can we anticipate both a) the relative contribution to the Mission of a System of Systems by a constituent in that System of Systems AND b) the relative loss of contribution to the original mission of that constituent system once it is involved in the SoS?

4. Increasingly, brigade-scale SoS in-theater exhibit unexpected vulnerabilities and mind-numbing characteristics. How can these be foreseen? How can these be rapidly characterized in the SoS architecture?

5. Given a SoS configuration composed by someone else, a) how can we “decomplexify” it by deleting interrelations and even constituents that do not have significant effect on mission contribution and b) how can we assess its likely dynamic and integrity limits?

Sincerely,
Jack Ring
Co-chair, Quality and Outreach
Autonomous Systems Evaluation WG