Hybrid Architectures and Safety in Systems of Systems

摘要

Providing assurance that a complex weapon system will exhibit acceptable levels of safety risk to the user is adifficult, time-consuming, and resource intensive task. Systems -of-Systems, especially dynamically reconfigurableones that include legacy systems, significantly increase the level of effort required to mitigate the risk. The systemof systems architecture can have a significant impact on the effort required. Safety patterns or safety architecturescannot guarantee that the system or system of systems will be “safe”: an infinite number of implementations arepossible for each pattern. However, safety patterns make the integration of desirable safety features and theirverification easier and more effective. This paper examines architectural patterns referred to a “safety patterns” or“safety architectures” and hybrid architectures that improve the integration of desirable safety features to achieve anacceptable level of risk in complex systems and systems of systems. It also examines them with respect to weaponand weapon-related systems and specifically to command and control systems that directly or indirectly performfunctions related to detection, tracking, and identification of threats and preparation, launch, and targeting ofweapons. It concludes with recommendations for systems of systems hybrid architectures that support desirablesafety features to provide acceptable levels of risk during operational use.