First Look at Important Issues in System Architecture

摘要

System architecture has emerged as one of the most important areas of research for the Air Force. Many past system failures or problems can be attributed to improper system architectures or even no architecture at all. It is very critical to identify a set of important research topics in this area so that researchers and funding agencies can focus their attention to these topics to make the research investments most effective and to produce the research results that can benefit the Air Force most. This report summarized the research project which identified several important research issues after extensive research and discussions with experts and specialists We believe investments on these important research directions will great enhance Air Force's capabilities in acquisition, design, and implementation of future generations of systems. These important issues are: a new mathematical framework and operators of system architecture, practical applications of system architecture, and whether it is feasible to adopt the 'wind tunnel' concept to system architecture.