Darth Vader's Secret Weapon: Implementing Mission Engineering with UAF

When planning and conducting a Mission Engineering (ME) study, it is important to have a complete, correct, and coherent model of the mission architecture. The Unified Architecture Framework (UAF) has been found to be effective for this purpose. The OUSD (R&E) Mission Integration office is exploring how to use UAF for their ME architectures. This paper will explore some of the required modeling features and constructs that will enable this to occur. The paper “Implementing Mission Engineering with UAF” was presented at a previous conference and this paper will expand on that presentation and will discuss additional work that has been accomplished since then. This paper will also explore the proposed extensions for UAF to better support ME. We created a prototype model using the Battle of Hoth from Star Wars as a proof of concept for these modeling extensions and used the process and ME concepts defined in the Mission Engineering Guide (MEG). Since then there have been several concepts that were explored such as compatibility with the Model-Based Acquisition (MBAcq) approach, recent initiatives from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Mission Capabilities, Enterprise Systems Engineering (ESE) process and methods, detailed resource engagement, use of different modeling languages (e.g., Systems Modeling Language (SysML), SysML v2 and UAF v2), Effects and Outcomes, variety of measures, additional attributes/stereotypes such as differentiation between enemy/friendly/neutral - Blue Force, Red Force, etc., provenance/confidence of enemy resources, and so forth. This paper will summarize the research and modeling done to date and explore these additional concepts as well as new ideas introduced in the MEG v2.