Engineering 21st century systems

The process used to engineer systems exists in the complex interrelationship of organization and product and is driven by the prevailing paradigms. The process used to engineer systems during the cold war is the legacy of today. Future systems will be defined on a much broader scale and will be driven by different paradigms. The legacy process can be converted to a viable one by reestablishing a common frame of reference and vision for engineering naval systems. This paper offers a theory that could be used to reconstitute the cold war legacy to provide a viable approach to meeting current and future challenges. The bases of this theory are derived from the key attributes of systems and their evolution from World War II through the cold war. The theory is used to make specific recommendations that could be used as a framework for engineering 21st Century systems of systems.