Effectively Integrating Laboratory, Government, and Industry to Develop and Acquire National Security Space Systems

he Integrated Systems Engineering Team (ISET) is a pragmatic means to integrate government, industry, and laboratory/academic organizations to develop national security space (NSS) systems. To ensure that the government can be an intelligent buyer and industry can be an informed provider of future operational production, including an ISET as part of the technical approach is highly effective for acquisition programs that require concept definition and operational proto-typing. A core challenge within the NSS community is developing complex operational systems with utility across various organizational entities; the ISET provides the ability to allocate organizational capability to manage risk during program development and acquisition. The ISET approach also allows technical interactions among participants, without conflict of interest, ensuring the efficacy of future competition for operational space, weapon, or intelligence system development. It is necessary to incorporate various institutional entities because typical operational systems require extensive risk reduction during development; typical systems also require infusing technology, demonstrating prototype capability, following acquisition processes, and evolving initial operating capability to a fully sustained operational system integrated with other supporting systems. The ISET is a means to leverage the strengths of the various entities during all phases of system development and acquisition by providing an open, technical forum for the exchange of knowledge, linking prior and current development efforts to reduce risks in future phases of system acquisition. The particular instantiation of the ISET described in this article was applied to a responsive, prototype operational system with tactical functionality.