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Insurgents in Iraq Hack Unmanned U.S. Planes |
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Written by Jorg Largent
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The headline above, which is from multiple news sources, provides a hypothetical situation upon which one can raise questions about the application of the systems engineering process, or lack thereof. An important part of the process is to identify and consider all of the stakeholders. Did the developers of the system consider the targets?
The insurgents who are the targets are stakeholders. They may not have been available for the concept development stage of the project, but they are stakeholders nonetheless, and, assuming the headline to be true, have been very busy writing their own chapter in the Concept of Operations document. Being on the outside and relying upon the media for data is tenuous at best. In counterpoint, perhaps the concept development phase included a comprehensive threat analysis, recognized the risk of interception of in-the-clear transmissions, and determined that the probability of a mission being compromised was acceptable versus the cost comparison between encrypted and commercial off-the-shelf equipment. A third potential point of curiosity is whether the process of requirements decomposition and product development might have wandered away from the original defining requirements and ConOps. The novelty of modern software and computers brings with it the risk of the fascination with what they can do overshadowing what they need to do, resulting in “shelfware” or “staleware.” As an aside, it should be noted that while software and computers are currently the focus of most novelty, they have no monopoly on improper requirements decomposition and requirements creep. In conclusion, the headline provides very little insight into a supposed technical problem, but it does provide a basis for illustrating potential points regarding the proper application of the systems engineering process. |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 16 January 2010 11:07 )
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