Systems of Systems

In addition to the six technical offices that manage the Agency’s research portfolio, DARPA operates the Adaptive Execution Office , a support office chartered to accelerate the transition of game-changing DARPA technologies into Department of Defense capabilities. AEO provides DARPA with robust connections to the warfighter community and assists the Agency with the planning and execution of technology demonstrations and field trials to promote adoption by the Services.

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.

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. John S. Paschkewitz joined DARPA as a program manager in April 2015. He is interested in new paradigms and approaches for the interactive design of complex physical systems and system-of-systems (SoS) architectures.