Affordability Tradeoffs Under Uncertainty Using Epoch-Era Analysis

Abstract

Acquiring defense systems in the face of urgent needs, budget challenges and scarce resources drives the need for greater process efficiency, placing focus on designing for affordability as a requirement. While there is progress, an efficient process for early lifecycle affordability tradeoff that takes uncertainty into account is lacking. Methods for exploring design tradespaces have matured, but largely fall short in evaluating/selecting resilient system concepts, meaning affordably adaptable under uncertain futures. Affordability tradeoffs are possible, but limited to tradeoffs for current operating environments or single point futures. As such, it's not possible to truly evaluate system concepts for resiliency since this necessitates evaluation across many alternative futures that may unfold differently. A recently developed approach, Epoch-Era Analysis, provides the ability to evaluate system concepts for both multiple epochs (periods of fixed context and needs) and eras (ordered sequences of epochs). This research has demonstrated usefulness of Epoch-Era Analysis in time-related affordability tradeoffs, with concurrent consideration of affordability with other key decision criteria, such as performance uncertainty. Short-run and long-run impacts of decisions in the face of temporally unfolding uncertainties are explicitly addressed by encapsulating key uncertainty factors into epochs and eras. A beta-level affordability tradeoff method with case application has been developed in this one-year research study. The method enables analysis of affordability in the face of changing contexts and needs (epochs) in short-run and long-run alternative futures (eras). In support of early lifecycle affordability tradeoffs, the method supports decision-makers faced with choosing among multiple alternative system concepts to answer the question, Which system concept delivers highest capabilities at cost over time, taking into account potential shifts in context (e.g., policy change, technology availability) and needs (e.g., change in mission)?