Date of Award

3-2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Systems Engineering

Department

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

First Advisor

John M. Colombi, PhD

Abstract

Integrated Architectures and Network Centric Warfare represent two central concepts in the Department of Defense's (DoD) on-going transformation. The true power of integrated architectures is brought to bear when they are combined with simulation to move beyond a static representation and create an executable architecture. This architecture can then be used to experiment with system configurations and parameter values to guide employment decisions. The process of developing and utilizing an executable architecture will be employed to assess an Air Operations Center (AOC). This thesis applies and expands upon the methodology of Dr. Alexander Levis, former Chief Scientist of the Air Force, to the static architecture representing the Aerospace Operations Center (AOC). Using Colored Petri Nets and other simulation tools, an executable architecture for the AOC's Air Tasking Order (ATO) production thread was developed. These models were then used to compare the performance of a current, forward-deployed AOC configuration to three other potential configurations that utilize a network centric environment to deploy a portion of the AOC and provide reach-back capabilities to the non-deployed units. Performance was measured by the amount of time required to execute the ATO cycle under each configuration. Communication requirements were analyzed for each configuration and stochastic delays were modeled for all transactions in which requirements could not be met due to the physical configuration of the AOC elements. All four configurations were found to exhibit statistically different behavior with regard to ATO cycle time.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GSE-ENY-05-M03

DTIC Accession Number

ADA439748

Comments

Co-authored thesis.

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