Joint NASA and Army Awards Fund Model-Based Systems Engineering Initiatives
This post originally appeared on the Adventium Labs website. Adventium was acquired by Galois in 2022.
NASA awarded Adventium a two-year, nearly $900K grant to mature and transition results from a previous NASA research program to the Army Combat Capabilities and Development Command (CCDC)’s Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator (JMR-TD) program and related programs. The grant is a one for one match of Army funding from the JMR-TD program, one of 11 such grants made under NASA’s Civilian Commercialization Readiness Pilot Program (CCRPP). The result will provide new capabilities to Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE) initiatives at both NASA and the Department of Defense (DoD). The Continuous Architecture Framework for Fault Management Assessment and Design (CAFFMAD) will develop continuous design trade space analysis capabilities and provide new safety and security system analysis tools that will enhance systems engineers’ ability to make complex design decisions for mission and life-critical systems.
JMR-TD is a Science and Technology (S&T) program to develop, expand, and demonstrate new capabilities in vertical lift technology in preparation for the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) acquisition program, one of the Army’s top six modernization priorities. The JMR-TD program includes a series of Mission Systems Architecture Demonstrations (MSADs) with multiple goals, including prototyping an Architecture-Centric Virtual Integration Process (ACVIP). The Army plans to use the resulting ACVIP in future FVL acquisitions in order to mitigate errors early and continuously throughout the system lifecycle. ACVIP employs system models, and analysis of those models, to provide a basis for more effective communications between and among the acquisition and requirements communities, including contractors, engineers and decision makers.
The combination of Army and the NASA funds will provide: (1) Workflow integration capabilities that will allow trade space analysis to be performed continuously as models are updated and refined; (2) A tool-agnostic trade space integrated with multiple modeling languages and tool environments, including System Modeling Language (SysML) and Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) models; (3) New safety and security analysis capabilities for mission-critical systems; and (4) Training course and materials in the new tools and capabilities. The results will be made available on Adventium’s Curated Access to Model-based Engineering Tools (CAMET®) Library.