On the Systems Engineering and Management of Systems of Systems and Federations of Systems

This paper is concerned with the engineering of systems that are themselves comprised of other component systems, and where each of the component systems serves organizational and human purposes. These component purposes may be locally managed and optimized independently, or nearly so, of the objectives to be met by the composite system. There are a number of inherent characteristics of these systems, and such related terms as systems of systems (SOS) or federations of systems (FOS) or federated systems of systems (F-SOS) are often used to characterize them. It is asserted that the resultant systems generally possess the characteristics of complex adaptive systems. We provide an overview of the literature describing these engineering efforts and provide plausible strategies for systems engineering and management of SOS and FOS that are based on the principles of a new federalism. Finally, the implications of these plausible SOS and FOS systems engineering and management concepts are discussed with emphasis on evolutionary acquisition in the style of DoD and Intelligence Community related programs.