Research Highlight: Mission Engineering and Integration of Emerging Technologies

Jan 23, 2026

The SERC portfolio of funded research tasks furthers its guiding vision of being the networked national resource to further systems research and its impact on issues of national and global significance.

Research Highlight

Research Task: Mission Engineering and Integration of Emerging Technologies
Sponsor: U.S. Space Force and Space Systems Command, Military Communications & Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Program Executive Office (SSC/MCPNT)
Principal Investigator (PI): Dr. Michael Orosz (University of Southern California/Information Sciences Institute)

This research supports the national focus on developing acquisition and industry to be as strong and fast as the warfighter.

Background

The Need: Develop systems quickly that are adaptive to changing requirements.

Adopting relevant industry best practices is difficult in large and complex mission-critical enterprise systems.

Systems engineering (SE) and Agile development processes provide defense programs opportunities to achieve efficiencies. The need to comply with DoDI 5000.02 is a challenge in environments moving from a traditional DoDI 5000.02 waterfall process to an Agile/DevSecOps (Development, Security, and Operations) approach in real-time while also incorporating new systems capabilities and functionality. System quality, metrics, and timelines must be safeguarded during such a transition, particularly as these rely on different organizations, each with varying levels of Agile/DevSecOps experience, to produce mission-critical systems that can’t fail when delivered. Relevant workforce training needs to be developed to ensure the success of future Agile/DevSecOps operations.

“Current approaches to develop systems for the warfighter often take too long and, in many cases, are obsolete by the time they are delivered. We need to accelerate getting relevant systems developed and delivered to the warfighter. The research we are doing directly addresses that need.”
— Dr. Michael Orosz, Principal Investigator

Purpose

Improve Department of Defense (DoD) competitiveness, specifically by improving existing space-based software system acquisition processes.

The research team recently finished Option Year 2 (OY2) of a three-year task. The work aims to provide mission engineering research expertise to better understand the impacts of adopting Agile, DevSecOps, and other industry best-practices in developing mission critical capabilities as the SSC enterprise transitions from traditional development to Agile/DevSecOps and other modern development approaches. The team is also providing research expertise in emerging technologies and related future workforce education, including research into future technologies and approaches that will enhance mission operations – including command/control, launch, and end-user systems.

“In our research, we’re embedded in the acquisition environment. We can observe what is and what is not working. We can then refine and adjust (or at least make recommendations to the Government and/or the development prime contractor) as needed. This allows us to quickly vet approaches and make the lessons learned and recommendations available to the rest of the acquisition community.”
— Dr. Orosz

Results

The top recommendation to date focuses on the need for upfront systems engineering to understand initial priorities, which enables:

development of end-to-end tests to facilitate integration and testing (I&T);
determination of the corresponding needed resources;
understanding external dependencies and corresponding risks; and
determining the workforce needed and when certain skills are required.

Looking Ahead

The project team is planning to undertake the following as the task enters OY3:

Explore non-space-based DoD programs that are adopting Agile, DevSecOps, and other modern industry best practices for lessons learned.
Explore how AI can be used to enhance DoD systems engineering, management, and workforce training.