Systems of Systems

System-of-Systems (SoS) architectures are increasingly central in managing defense, national security and urban infrastructure applications. However, it is difficult to model and currently impossible to systematically design such complex systems using existing tools, which has led to inferior performance, unexpected problems and weak resilience.

As commercial technologies become more advanced and widely available, adversaries are rapidly developing capabilities that put our forces at risk. To counter these threats, the U.S. military is developing systems-of-systems concepts in which networks of manned and unmanned platforms, weapons, sensors, and electronic warfare systems interact over robust satellite and tactical communications links. These approaches offer flexible and powerful options to the warfighter, but the complexity introduced by the increase in the number of employment alternatives creates a battle management challenge.

The SoSITE program aims to develop system of systems architectures to maintain U.S. air superiority in contested environments.

Dr. Craig Lawrence joined DARPA in 2013 as a Program Manager for the Strategic Technology Office (STO). Dr. Lawrence’s interests are in battle management, command and control (BMC2); autonomy, optimization and control theory; and modeling and simulation.

Dr. Jeffrey Krolik joined DARPA in December 2014 as a Program Manager in the Strategic Technology Office. His interests include physics-based signal and sensor array processing with applications to radio frequency (RF) and acoustic surveillance systems.