Mission Engineering

A special issue of Systems (ISSN 2079-8954).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2019) | Viewed by 20288

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA 93943, USA
Interests: system architecture; enterprise systems; set-based design; systems engineering

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The term “mission engineering” refers to the mission as the system of interest and applies systems engineering concepts, methods, and tools to the design of missions.  Mission Engineering involves the determination of mission capabilities, a concept of operations, development and design of the operational activities, the operational network, and the allocation of operational activities to operational nodes for execution.  In many systems, the operational nodes are different systems, thus leading to a mission-oriented system-of-systems (SoS), which is formed to execute a single mission after which the SoS would disband.

In the military, the term mission defines the objective of a military operation.  However, the concept of mission engineering could be more broadly applied in other organizational contexts from logistics, healthcare, to energy since we design all systems with a purpose or objective.

There is a growing interest in how systems engineering can be applied at the mission level:  see for example Hernandez et al. (2017) and Irwin (2018).  Mission engineering must consider operational issues as well as technical issues.  Moreover, mission engineering is usually constrained by the available constituent systems, their capabilities, and the degree to which they can interoperate.  This changes the traditional top-down systems engineering process to a bottom-up process.

The special issue on mission engineering seeks papers addressing the following topics:

  • Integration and interoperability
  • MBSE with mission engineering
  • Operational level trade studies
  • Methods for mission engineering
  • Tools for mission engineering
  • Modeling and simulation
  • Capability needs analysis
  • Verification and validation
  • System-of-systems engineering at the mission level
  • Operational thread and scenario analysis

References

Hernandez, A.S.; Karimova, T.; Nelson, D.H. Mission engineering and analysis: innovations in the military decision making process. In Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Management 2017 International Annual Conference, Huntsville, AL, USA, 18-21 October 2017, doi: 10.13140/2.1.4139.3449.

Irwin, T. Operational mission architecture framework: A blended architecture methodology for enabling operational capability, Ph.D. Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA, September 2018.

Prof. Dr. Ronald E. Giachetti
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • mission engineering
  • systems engineering
  • capabilities
  • model-based systems engineering
  • system-of-systems
  • operational analysis

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 4610 KiB  
Article
Application of Model-Based Systems Engineering Concepts to Support Mission Engineering
by Paul Beery and Eugene Paulo
Systems 2019, 7(3), 44; https://doi.org/10.3390/systems7030044 - 4 Sep 2019
Cited by 26 | Viewed by 11134
Abstract
This paper presents an approach to the utilization of model-based systems engineering (MBSE) early in the system lifecycle, which focuses on early identification of desirable system characteristics to support mission engineering (ME). The paper relies on the definition of an analysis approach and [...] Read more.
This paper presents an approach to the utilization of model-based systems engineering (MBSE) early in the system lifecycle, which focuses on early identification of desirable system characteristics to support mission engineering (ME). The paper relies on the definition of an analysis approach and the associated mapping of architectural products. The analysis strategy focuses on integration of the results of operational simulations and system synthesis models through tradespace visualization. The architectural mapping presents the association of Systems Modeling Language (SysML) products to the analysis strategy. The coordination of these elements is presented as a demonstration of the role that MBSE concepts can play in support of ME. The approach is demonstrated through a case study analysis of a conceptual mine warfare system conducting mine countermeasure operations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mission Engineering)
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13 pages, 2389 KiB  
Article
The Naval Postgraduate School’s Department of Systems Engineering Approach to Mission Engineering Education through Capstone Projects
by Douglas L. Van Bossuyt, Paul Beery, Bryan M. O’Halloran, Alejandro Hernandez and Eugene Paulo
Systems 2019, 7(3), 38; https://doi.org/10.3390/systems7030038 - 4 Aug 2019
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 7930
Abstract
This article presents an educational approach to applied capstone research projects using a mission engineering focus. It reviews recent advances in mission engineering within the Department of Defense and integrates that work into an approach for research within the Systems Engineering Department at [...] Read more.
This article presents an educational approach to applied capstone research projects using a mission engineering focus. It reviews recent advances in mission engineering within the Department of Defense and integrates that work into an approach for research within the Systems Engineering Department at the Naval Postgraduate School. A generalized sequence of System Definition, System Modeling, and System Analysis is presented as an executable sequence of activities to support analysis of operational missions within a student research project at Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). That approach is detailed and demonstrated through analysis of the integration of a long-range strike capability on a MH-60S helicopter. The article serves as a demonstration of an approach for producing operationally applicable results from student projects in the context of mission engineering. Specifically, it demonstrates that students can execute a systems engineering project that conducts system-level design with direct consideration of mission impacts at the system of systems level. Discussion of the benefits and limitations of this approach are discussed and suggestions for integrating mission engineering into capstone courses are provided. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mission Engineering)
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