Modeling Defense Systems of Systems: Lessons Learned

Due to technological trends such as booming connectivity and the spread of autonomous platforms, system of systems architecting has become a critical challenge in the defense realm. In this paper, we describe recent system of systems (SoS) modeling activities conducted within the French Ministry of Defense and a few lessons learned along the way, especially about how to keep all the stakeholders involved. The focus is made on the model purpose, both for defining relevant levels of information and to imagine tools that would make the best of it. Among the possibilities raised, pairing SoS modeling with wargames is especially discussed since high level architecture assessment through simulation is common practice and both fields converge on their respective modeling concepts.