Cyber-physical acquisition strategy for COTS-based agility-driven engineering

The rising cost of military aircraft has driven the DoD to increase the utilization of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components in new acquisitions. Despite several demonstrated advantages of COTS-based systems, challenges relating to obsolescence arise when attempting to design and sustain such systems using traditional acquisition processes. This research addresses these challenges through the creation of an Agile Systems Engineering framework that is specifically aimed at COTS-based systems. This framework, known as the Cyber-physical Acquisition Strategy for COTS-based Agility-Driven Engineering (CASCADE), amends the traditional systems engineering process through the addition of an "identification phase" during which requirements are balanced against the capabilities of commercially-available components. The CASCADE framework motivates the creation of a new Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation which enables the creation of optimum obsolescence mitigation plans. Using this CASCADE MILP formulation, two sets of experiments are carried out: First, verification experiments demonstrate that the CASCADE MILP conforms to expected trends and agrees with existing results. Next, the CASCADE MILP is applied to a representative set of COTS-based systems in order to determine the appropriate level of obsolescence forecast accuracy, and to uncover new system-level cost-vs-reliability trends associated with COTS component modification.Ph.D