An Evaluating Approach For Technology Maturity Of Weapons System-of-systems

Antagonizing of Weapon System of System (WSoS) plays an important role in modern war. Technology maturity poses a direct impact on WSoS development and construction. Evaluation on technology maturity of WSoS is the measurement of the technology readiness developed to accomplish specific capabilities. Technology maturity is a key basis to WSoS planning and decision-making and a factor that influence WSoS construction risk. But at present research on technology maturity mainly focus on a single technology other than that in a system scale and barely for WSoS. Research on technology maturity evaluation of WSoS is carried out in this studied. Main content and contribution states as follows:(1) To satisfy the requirement of technology maturity evaluation of WSoS, Technology View (TV) is development to describe technical architecture, which is the base of evaluation of WSoS. Several System View products are given to assist TV development. Three kinds of TV products indispensable to technology maturity evaluation of WSoS are specificly elaborated. Based on description on technical architecture, TRL evaluation process of WSoS is given.(2) An evaluation method based on Evidential Reasoning(ER) is proposed taking consideration of fundamental technology evaluation using TRL and characteristics of system technology maturity evaluation. Methods of experts scoring and goal programming are combined to identify weights of fundamental technologies. ER aggregation method is applied to calculate system technology maturity evaluation result.(3) Based on the result of system evaluation, characteristics of WSoS technology maturity evaluation is analyzed and an aggregation process for technology maturity from system to WSoS is proposed. Interrelationship between systems is analyzed and interfaces requirements are given. Interface maturity is evaluated and expectation theory is used to unify the evaluation result of system and interface. Evaluation algorithm of WSoS technology maturity is concluded.(4) Aiming at the requirement of technology view description, software is developed to support technology maturity evaluation process. An aggressive filed defense WSoS is applied as a case study to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the evaluation method proposed by demonstrating the process of WSoS technology maturity evaluation.