Defining Engineering Systems: Investigating National Missile Defense

Abstract

The MIT Engineering Systems Division is currently building its intellectual framework. There is not yet consensus within ESD as to which tools and methods are central to the nascent engineering systems approach; which questions it should address; or the extent to which qualitative approaches should be incorporated into it. The goal of this paper is to sharpen the debate by presenting multiple analyses of a single engineering system. Presenting varying perspectives illuminates issues such as: What types of questions should engineering systems practitioners ask when analyzing problems? Which tools are fundamental, which are peripheral, and which lie outside its purview? Is there a trade-off between the analytical rigor of different tools and the degree to which they can address questions the approach considers important? Does this approach suggest generalizable principles for analyzing engineering systems? This paper uses national missile defense (NMD) as the analytical vehicle for this approach. By any definition, NMD is an engineering system. Moreover, the complexity of NMD facilitates the framing of analyses on multiple levels, and provides a mechanism for exploring the ramifications of different potential definitions of “engineering systems” as a discipline. Finally, the issue is policy-relevant. The United States is currently deciding how to build and deploy NMD; the choice of system architectures may have important cost, foreign policy, military readiness, and domestic political ramifications. While there is considerable descriptive information about system components, there is little hard data in the open literature regarding system performance and costs. This paper draws upon the available literature, while making estimates where necessary.