System of Systems Engineering Approach for Complex Deterministic and Nondeterministic Systems (ACDANS)

As new commercial and military systems evolve, engineers face significant challenges that require solutions beyond traditional systems engineering. For example, military commanders recognize that in order to confront threats from high-tech adversaries, an advanced system of systems (SoS) is required to coordinate combat across multiple battlefield domains: land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. System of Systems Engineering (SoSE), along with associated Modeling and Simulation (M&S) tools, can fill some of this need, especially for operational decision-support for complex multi-domain environments. This paper presents an M&S-based SoSE approach for complex SoS composed of deterministic and non-deterministic subsystems supported with reinforcement learning. The paper presents this new methodology, use cases, and preliminary results that address specific SoS challenges for a set of complex decision-support challenges.