The Application of Graph Theory to Modeling, Simulation, Analysis Looping and Trust to Quantify Mission Success

Mission Engineering is the quantification of the effects applied by a system-of-systems (SoS) to achieve measurable desired results. The execution of the mission is defined by a mission thread; that is the sequence of actions/processes executed by elemental systems. Typically, there are many plausible mission threads that can be executed. The domain of complex missions has been described as ‘Wicked’ because traditional military and space program-based Systems Engineering practices fail due to a lack of discrete phases, a dependence on context, and the non-uniqueness of a ‘good-enough’ mission thread. Wicked problems also tend to be unstructured with no centralized control and do not lend themselves to linear step-by-step processes. Wicked problems are inherently uncertain leading to the broader issue of trust across a mission knowledge base, and any mission level analyses. The nature of a complex mission will require an iterative approach resulting in a continuous reduction in uncertainty, an increase in trust, and refinement in the topology of the mission thread. The approach described in this paper is based upon Applied Category Theory (ACT) as a universal representation of mathematical knowledge; OODA-based decomposition of mission threads focused on Boyd’s ORIENT function; and a Trust metric to provide decision makers confidence in the results.