Modeling and Simulation Support for System of Systems Engineering Applications

Chapter 17On Analysis of Ballistic Missile Defense Architecture through Surrogate Modeling and Simulation

Tommer R. Ender, Philip D. West, William Dale Blair, and Paul A. Miceli

Georgia Tech Research Institute, Atlanta, GA, USA

17.1 INTRODUCTION

Military and political leaders have desired to develop an effective Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) since the earliest threats were launched into London during World War II. Contemporary examples on the world geopolitical stage—such as North Korea’s initial testing of long-range ballistic missiles and Iran’s suspected ongoing nuclear weapons development programs—provide us with justification to field an effective BMDS. Designers are faced with the magnitude of one of the most complex system of systems (SoS) and the challenge of analyzing numerous constituent subsystems. The full-scale flight testing of realistic scenarios is not feasible due to this complexity, and large-scale testing would be cost prohibitive. Flight tests alone would not provide parametric trends that may give decision makers insights on all possible scenarios, even those not actually tested. Historical information is therefore rare, limiting the insights that the analyst or designer might derive about integrated BMDS performance characteristics.

Systems designers must rely on modeling and simulation (M&S) tools to provide the data necessary to perform trade studies and sensitivity analyses, which otherwise would be provided by integrated test and evaluation (Office ...