Through-life capability risk management for evolutionary complex military vetronics

The inherent nature of military vetronic systems, whose core constituents are a combination of soft and hard real-time, distributed, and in most cases embedded systems with mixed criticality; inevitably poses a challenge as how to deal with multidimensional complexity. Such complexity is not only the result of the actual technologies used but the stringent demands to have more flexible, reliable, powerful, easier to update and maintain military vehicles. This paper looks at some of the dimensions of complex military vetronic systems, such as functional partitioning, modularity and architectural concepts; making use of relevant standards and guidelines for architecture and verification and validation activities, the implementation of a testbed for technology insertion; a lifecycle model tailored to cope with such demands, incorporating risk management at a system level.