Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is a powerful and effective tool for design purposes, but our team believes it also has utility in managing existing systems. The Air Force Materiel Command, Life Cycle Management Center, Agile Combat Support Directorate, Simulators Program Office (AFLCMC/WNS) is responsible for thousands of simulators, of varying degrees of realism, distributed around the world. Additionally, every simulator helps to sharpen the skills of our warfighters in a non-destructive environment so that they will be ready for any high-pressure situation in a real aircraft. Many of these are large and complex Full Flight Simulators (FFS) that cost tens of millions of dollars and have several functions separated into multiple, physically distinct sub-systems. Each FFS has a demanding technical baseline. Each aircraft platform has many FFS technical baselines to manage, and from the enterprise perspective, sustaining this system-of-systems is difficult with documents alone. It is vitally important to maintain awareness and management of all of these technical baselines.
AFLCMC/WNS has launched the Operational Training Infrastructure Enterprise System Model as an innovative MBSE solution to better manage the Simulator Portfolio. This effort has not been without obstacles. First, MBSE is best known for its usefulness in system development; as a result there has been some skepticism that MBSE would not be applicable for a system already in sustainment. Second, the transition from Document Based Systems Engineering to MBSE continues to be met with resistances rooted in established processes, unfamiliarity, and risk aversion. Finally, the experiences of failed efforts in the past to adopt modeling solutions have left some within the organization hesitant to embrace MBSE. This paper discusses how our team plans to use MBSE for simulator sustainment and how the technical and organizational challenges to adopting MBSE in AFLCMC/WNS are being addressed.