Technology for Affordability

摘要

Things have changed with respect to the way military systems are designed, upgraded and maintained. In some cases these changes are good, but some have actually hurt the upgrade and modernization capability of the military. While COTS to some is a panacea, to others it reeks of disaster. In order to maximize the impact of the relatively few dollars available, industry must team with defense to select approaches that are good for both the military and business; "win-win" solutions. Designing new systems (once we have freed up funding by reducing the operations and support costs of legacy systems) must be done intelligently. Initiatives such as Simulation Based Acquisition must focus on real solutions, not just a series of high-level simulation tools that don't accurately represent proposed systems. Bit accurate, system-level virtual prototypes already exist. These must be leveraged so that we can truly "fly before buying". We must have 100% confidence that what is being simulated will work exactly the same way when implemented into a hardware/software system.