Model-Based System Development for Managing the Evolution of a Common Submarine Combat System

Managing the evolution of a complex product family that is deployed and maintained in multiple variants on various platforms using traditional systems engineering tools and processes is a significant challenge. An example is managing the evolution of a common combat system across a fleet of submarines. Due to the realities of budgets and operational scheduling, multiple versions of the product must be managed for each ship: the currently deployed version, the upcoming tech refresh version, and future versions in planning and development. Adding to the complexity, the product family has variations for each class and flight of submarine, individual ships may vary in capabilities and equipment from the flight baseline, ships within a flight are upgraded at different times driven by maintenance availabilities, and each periodic upgrade may introduce new functional capabilities as well as updated software and hardware as the combat system evolves. To streamline this task, an integrated model based systems engineering process is being developed around a collection of tightly coupled models built in SysML and UML. This paper provides a preliminary description of the structure of those models, and places it in the context of related research. General Terms: Systems Engineering, System Evolution Additional