Application of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) Product Line Engineering (PLE) to Realize Family of Systems (FoS) Objectives

Now that Modular Open Systems Approaches (MOSA) are being incorporated into the development of weapon systems that are acquired by the U.S. Department of War (DoW), attention is turning to transitioning disparate standalone weapon systems into an enterprise portfolio of weapon systems, a Family of Systems (FoS), whereby the effective management of a common constraining, or reference, architecture can aid in realizing the objective of 'develop once, reuse many times.' This is particularly challenging when enduring fleet legacy weapon systems are involved in addition to new development systems. Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) methodologies and techniques have now become the norm in system developments. It is, therefore, imperative to effectively employ MBSE techniques in establishing a FoS. This paper proposes an MBSE-based Product Line Engineering (PLE) method for implementing FoS architectures that enables controlled architectural variation while preserving enterprise reuse and architectural consistency.