Today the Air Force is dedicating resources to build a force capable of meeting the military challenges of the 21st century. The implementation of Acquisition Reform has provided us a process to efficiently modernize our air and space forces. An integral part of this process is Modeling and Simulation (M & S). When effectively included in our acquisition strategy, M & S will help us to reduce cost, schedule, and performance risk in all functional areas; reduce time between concept definition and delivery of systems; reduce infrastructure and resource usage; improve system performance; and optimize system support requirements. Our goal is to make the Air Force Acquisition process more efficient and effective through the use of M & S applications and databases.

The Committee on Modeling and Simulation Enhancements for 21st Century Manufacturing and Acquisition was formed by the NRC in response to a request from the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO) of DOD. The committee was asked to (1) investigate next-generation evolutionary and revolutionary M&S capabilities that will support enhanced defense systems acquisition; (2) identify specific emerging design, testing, and manufacturing process technologies that can be enabled by advanced M&S capabilities; (3) relate these emerging technologies to long-term DOD requirements; (4) assess ongoing efforts to develop advanced M&S capabilities and identify gaps that must be filled to make the emerging technologies a reality; (5) identify lessons learned from industry; and (6) recommend specific government actions to expedite development and to enable maximum DOD and U.S. commercial benefit from these capabilities. To complete its task, the committee identified relevant trends and their impact on defense acquisition needs; current use and support for use of M&S within DOD; lessons learned from commercial manufacturing; three cross-cutting and especially challenging uses of M&S technologies; and the areas in which basic research is needed in M&S in order to achieve the desired goals for manufacturing and defense acquisition.

The Committee on Modeling and Simulation Enhancements for 21st Century Manufacturing and Acquisition was formed by the NRC in response to a request from the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO) of DOD. The committee was asked to (1) investigate next-generation evolutionary and revolutionary M&S capabilities that will support enhanced defense systems acquisition; (2) identify specific emerging design, testing, and manufacturing process technologies that can be enabled by advanced M&S capabilities; (3) relate these emerging technologies to long-term DOD requirements; (4) assess ongoing efforts to develop advanced M&S capabilities and identify gaps that must be filled to make the emerging technologies a reality; (5) identify lessons learned from industry; and (6) recommend specific government actions to expedite development and to enable maximum DOD and U.S. commercial benefit from these capabilities. To complete its task, the committee identified relevant trends and their impact on defense acquisition needs; current use and support for use of M&S within DOD; lessons learned from commercial manufacturing; three cross-cutting and especially challenging uses of M&S technologies; and the areas in which basic research is needed in M&S in order to achieve the desired goals for manufacturing and defense acquisition.

Modeling, simulation, and analysis (MS&A) is a crucial tool for military affairs. MS&A is one of the announced pillars of a strategy for transforming the U.S. military. Yet changes in the enterprise of MS&A have not kept pace with the new demands arising from rapid changes in DOD processes and missions or with the rapid changes in the technology available to meet those demands. To help address those concerns, DOD asked the NRC to identify shortcomings in current practice of MS&A and suggest where and how they should be resolved. This report provides an assessment of the changing mission of DOD and environment in which it must operate, an identification of high-level opportunities for MS&A research to address the expanded mission, approaches for improving the interface between MS&A practitioners and decision makers, a discussion of training and continuing education of MS&A practitioners, and an examination of the need for coordinated military science research to support MS&A.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify and analyze the potential capabilities and limitations of the modeling and simulation (M & S) strategy used by the U.S. Army for acquisition purposes. This thesis considers the Army's current acquisition process, M & S technologies and the Army's organizational infrastructure to ascertain whether or not they adequately address cited goals. Specifically, the programmatics of DoD's 5000 series are evaluated to see if they support the concurrent processes afforded by M & S. The research indicates that the Army should focus on enhancing its requirements generation process by adequately supporting its Battle Labs. The degree to which M & S will impact the Army acquisition process is dependent on how well M & S and Battle Labs are represented in the Future Years Defense Plan. Recommendations in the areas of acquisition programmatics and Army organizational infrastructure are provided in an attempt to enhance the application of M & S in the Army's acquisition process.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify and analyze the potential capabilities and limitations of the modeling and simulation (M & S) strategy used by the U.S. Army for acquisition purposes. This thesis considers the Army's current acquisition process, M & S technologies and the Army's organizational infrastructure to ascertain whether or not they adequately address cited goals. Specifically, the programmatics of DoD's 5000 series are evaluated to see if they support the concurrent processes afforded by M & S. The research indicates that the Army should focus on enhancing its requirements generation process by adequately supporting its Battle Labs. The degree to which M & S will impact the Army acquisition process is dependent on how well M & S and Battle Labs are represented in the Future Years Defense Plan. Recommendations in the areas of acquisition programmatics and Army organizational infrastructure are provided in an attempt to enhance the application of M & S in the Army's acquisition process.

The ability of U.S. military forces to field new weapons systems quickly and to contain their cost growth has declined significantly over the past few decades. There are many causes including increased complexity, funding instability, bureaucracy, and more diverse user demands, but a view that is gaining more acceptance is that better systems engineering (SE) could help shorten development time. To investigate this assertion in more detail, the US Air Force asked the NRC to examine the role that SE can play during the acquisition life cycle to address root causes of program failure especially during pre-milestone A and early program phases. This book presents an assessment of the relationship between SE and program outcome; an examination of the SE workforce; and an analysis of SE functions and guidelines. The latter includes a definition of the minimum set of SE processes that need to be accounted for during project development.

Table of contents include: (1) Longuemare Endorses Two Important Modeling and Simulation Documents; (2) Simulation Based Acquisition; (3) Modeling and Simulation Use in the Army Acquisition Process; (4) Air Force Space Command Establishes First Space Battlelab; (5) Modeling and Simulation - A New Role for the Operational Tester; (6) SPY-1D(V) Models and Simulations Support Operational Testing in a Remote New Jersey Cornfield; (7) Put a Virtual Prototype on Your Desktop; (8) The Theater Missile Defense System Exerciser; (9) A New Vision, Further Leveraging Emerge From Orlando's Simulation Superstructure; (10) National Simulation Superstructure; (11) Integrated Ship Defense Modeling and Simulation Pilot Program; (12) Integrated Acquisition-Logistics Synthetic Environments for Total Value Assessment; (13) Why is Modeling and Simulation So Hard to Do? and (14) Air Force Modeling and Simulation Trends.

In August 1995, I commissioned a one year study with the objective of assessing the effectiveness of the use of modeling and simulation (M & S) in the acquisition process. In particular, I was looking for the metrics by which the Department of Defense could ascertain the value-if any-that was returned on its investment in M & S in terms of the reduction in time, resources, and risk in weapons systems development and fielding and in terms of increase in the military utility of those systems. I also tasked the study team while gathering information to support the assessment to note technical and other challenges to realizing the postulated benefits and to report on specific M & S tools and processes being used to facilitate the acquisition of systems in the DoD and industry. This report, which documents the results of that study, provides tangible, quantitative indicators that the use of M & S can provide substantial benefit measured in time, cost, productivity, and system quality and performance. The evidence is consistent and pervasive, across both DoD and industry. I personally was impressed that the most significant return on investment was realized when M & S was used as an integrator of functions within the acquisition process, i.e., integrating design and manufacturing or linking requirements more closely to test. This leads me to believe that its real value lies as an enabler of Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD).