Identifying the elements of real system age

Engineered systems do not age at the same rate and the calendar age of a system may not be as important of an indicator of age as other system attributes. Within the Department of Defense (DoD), services often perform upgrades and modifications to systems to extend the life of these systems. These modifications are efforts to extend the life of a system that may continue to provide value to the DoD and in essence reduce the age of an engineered system. This paper examines the components of an engineered system’s theoretical real system age. Literature on biological systems, software, and the medical real age indicators provide inspiration and background for this work. Much like the medical real age for humans, the real age of engineered systems will provide an indicator of the health of these systems when it comes to making the important decision to extend the life of a system or retire the system. The paper examines several systems, that the DoD has extended, to determine what attributes of the system, characterized by the systems engineering ilities, reduce the real age of a system. Engineering managers and systems engineers can use the real system age to determine if the DoD should extend the life of a legacy system, or retire it in favor of a newly developed system. This work provides a vital first step to identify important attributes of systems that impact a system’s real age that will lead to a mathematical representation of real system age.