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In the military, information technology (IT) has enabled profound advances in weapons systems and the management and operation of the defense enterprise. A significant portion of the Department of Defense (DOD) budget is spent on capabilities acquired as commercial IT commodities, developmental IT systems that support a broad range of warfighting and functional applications, and IT components embedded in weapons systems. The ability of the DOD and its industrial partners to harness and apply IT for warfighting, command and control and communications, logistics, and transportation has contributed enormously to fielding the world's best defense force. However, despite the DOD's decades of success in leveraging IT across the defense enterprise, the acquisition of IT systems continues to be burdened with serious problems. To address these issues, the National Research Council assembled a group of IT systems acquisition and T&E experts, commercial software developers, software engineers, computer scientists and other academic researchers. The group evaluated applicable legislative requirements, examined the processes and capabilities of the commercial IT sector, analyzed DOD's concepts for systems engineering and testing in virtual environments, and examined the DOD acquisition environment. The present volume summarizes this analysis and also includes recommendations on how to improve the acquisition, systems engineering, and T&E processes to achieve the DOD's network-centric goals.
In the military, information technology (IT) has enabled profound advances in weapons systems and the management and operation of the defense enterprise. A significant portion of the Department of Defense (DOD) budget is spent on capabilities acquired as commercial IT commodities, developmental IT systems that support a broad range of warfighting and functional applications, and IT components embedded in weapons systems. The ability of the DOD and its industrial partners to harness and apply IT for warfighting, command and control and communications, logistics, and transportation has contributed enormously to fielding the world's best defense force. However, despite the DOD's decades of success in leveraging IT across the defense enterprise, the acquisition of IT systems continues to be burdened with serious problems. To address these issues, the National Research Council assembled a group of IT systems acquisition and T&E experts, commercial software developers, software engineers, computer scientists and other academic researchers. The group evaluated applicable legislative requirements, examined the processes and capabilities of the commercial IT sector, analyzed DOD's concepts for systems engineering and testing in virtual environments, and examined the DOD acquisition environment. The present volume summarizes this analysis and also includes recommendations on how to improve the acquisition, systems engineering, and T&E processes to achieve the DOD's network-centric goals.
During the past decade and a half, the National Research Council, through its Committee on National Statistics, has carried out a number of studies on the application of statistical methods to improve the testing and development of defense systems. These studies were intended to provide advice to the Department of Defense (DOD), which sponsored these studies. The previous studies have been concerned with the role of statistical methods in testing and evaluation, reliability practices, software methods, combining information, and evolutionary acquisition. Industrial Methods for the Effective Testing and Development of Defense Systems is the latest in a series of studies, and unlike earlier studies, this report identifies current engineering practices that have proved successful in industrial applications for system development and testing. This report explores how developmental and operational testing, modeling and simulation, and related techniques can improve the development and performance of defense systems, particularly techniques that have been shown to be effective in industrial applications and are likely to be useful in defense system development. In addition to the broad issues, the report identifies three specific topics for its focus: finding failure modes earlier, technology maturity, and use of all relevant information for operational assessments.
How differing assessments of risk by physicists and computer scientists have influenced public debate over nuclear defense. In a rapidly changing world, we rely upon experts to assess the promise and risks of new technology. But how do these experts make sense of a highly uncertain future? In Arguments that Count, Rebecca Slayton offers an important new perspective. Drawing on new historical documents and interviews as well as perspectives in science and technology studies, she provides an original account of how scientists came to terms with the unprecedented threat of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). She compares how two different professional communities—physicists and computer scientists—constructed arguments about the risks of missile defense, and how these arguments changed over time. Slayton shows that our understanding of technological risks is shaped by disciplinary repertoires—the codified knowledge and mathematical rules that experts use to frame new challenges. And, significantly, a new repertoire can bring long-neglected risks into clear view. In the 1950s, scientists recognized that high-speed computers would be needed to cope with the unprecedented speed of ICBMs. But the nation's elite science advisors had no way to analyze the risks of computers so used physics to assess what they could: radar and missile performance. Only decades later, after establishing computing as a science, were advisors able to analyze authoritatively the risks associated with complex software—most notably, the risk of a catastrophic failure. As we continue to confront new threats, including that of cyber attack, Slayton offers valuable insight into how different kinds of expertise can limit or expand our capacity to address novel technological risks.
Critical Code contemplates Department of Defense (DoD) needs and priorities for software research and suggests a research agenda and related actions. Building on two prior booksâ€"Summary of a Workshop on Software Intensive Systems and Uncertainty at Scale and Preliminary Observations on DoD Software Research Needs and Prioritiesâ€"the present volume assesses the nature of the national investment in software research and, in particular, considers ways to revitalize the knowledge base needed to design, produce, and employ software-intensive systems for tomorrow's defense needs. Critical Code discusses four sets of questions: To what extent is software capability significant for the DoD? Is it becoming more or less significant and strategic in systems development? Will the advances in software producibility needed by the DoD emerge unaided from industry at a pace sufficient to meet evolving defense requirements? What are the opportunities for the DoD to make more effective use of emerging technology to improve software capability and software producibility? In which technology areas should the DoD invest in research to advance defense software capability and producibility?
From the days of biplanes and open cockpits, the air forces of the United States have relied on the mastery of technology. From design to operation, a project can stretch to 20 years and more, with continuous increases in cost. Much of the delay and cost growth afflicting modern United States Air Force (USAF) programs is rooted in the incorporation of advanced technology into major systems acquisition. Leaders in the Air Force responsible for science and technology and acquisition are trying to determine the optimal way to utilize existing policies, processes, and resources to properly document and execute pre-program of record technology development efforts, including opportunities to facilitate the rapid acquisition of revolutionary capabilities and the more deliberate acquisition of evolutionary capabilities. Evaluation of U.S. Air Force Preacquisition Technology Development responds to this need with an examination of the current state of Air Force technology development and the environment in which technology is acquired. The book considers best practices from both government and industry to distill appropriate recommendations that can be implemented within the USAF.
The development and application of technology has been an essential part of U.S. airpower, leading to a century of air supremacy. But that developmental path has rarely been straight, and it has never been smooth. Only the extraordinary efforts of exceptional leadership - in the Air Forces and the wider Department of Defense, in science and in industry - have made the triumphs of military airpower possible. Development Planning provides recommendations to improve development planning for near-term acquisition projects, concepts not quite ready for acquisition, corporate strategic plans, and training of acquisition personnel. This report reviews past uses of development planning by the Air Force, and offers an organizational construct that will help the Air Force across its core functions. Developmental planning, used properly by experienced practitioners, can provide the Air Force leadership with a tool to answer the critical question, Over the next 20 years in 5-year increments, what capability gaps will the Air Force have that must be filled? Development planning will also provide for development of the workforce skills needed to think strategically and to defectively define and close the capability gap. This report describes what development planning could be and should be for the Air Force.
The Department of Commerce operates two telecommunications research laboratories located at the Department of Commerce's Boulder, Colorado, campus: the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA's) Institute for Telecommunications Sciences (ITS) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST's) Communications Technology Laboratory (CTL). CTL develops appropriate measurements and standards to enable interoperable public safety communications, effective and efficient spectrum use and sharing, and advanced communication technologies. CTL is a newly organized laboratory within NIST, formed mid-2014. As it is new and its planned work represents a departure from that carried out by the elements of which it was composed, this study focuses on its available resources and future plans rather than past work. The Boulder telecommunications laboratories currently play an important role in the economic vitality of the country and can play an even greater role given the importance of access to spectrum and spectrum sharing to the wireless networking and mobile cellular industries. Research advances are needed to ensure the continued evolution and enhancement of the connected world the public has come to expect.
The authors analyze various approaches to speed acquisition of military capabilities and keep pace with evolving threats, assess these approaches' suitability for different conditions and acquisition types, and identify implementation issues.
Computing and information and communications technology (ICT) has dramatically changed how we work and live, has had profound effects on nearly every sector of society, has transformed whole industries, and is a key component of U.S. global leadership. A fundamental driver of advances in computing and ICT has been the fact that the single-processor performance has, until recently, been steadily and dramatically increasing year over years, based on a combination of architectural techniques, semiconductor advances, and software improvements. Users, developers, and innovators were able to depend on those increases, translating that performance into numerous technological innovations and creating successive generations of ever more rich and diverse products, software services, and applications that had profound effects across all sectors of society. However, we can no longer depend on those extraordinary advances in single-processor performance continuing. This slowdown in the growth of single-processor computing performance has its roots in fundamental physics and engineering constraints-multiple technological barriers have converged to pose deep research challenges, and the consequences of this shift are deep and profound for computing and for the sectors of the economy that depend on and assume, implicitly or explicitly, ever-increasing performance. From a technology standpoint, these challenges have led to heterogeneous multicore chips and a shift to alternate innovation axes that include, but are not limited to, improving chip performance, mobile devices, and cloud services. As these technical shifts reshape the computing industry, with global consequences, the United States must be prepared to exploit new opportunities and to deal with technical challenges. The New Global Ecosystem in Advanced Computing: Implications for U.S. Competitiveness and National Security outlines the technical challenges, describe the global research landscape, and explore implications for competition and national security.