UAF® Summit 2025

Leadership Spotlight: UAF Development Status

Presenter: Dr. Aurelijus Morkevicius, MBSE Consulting Director, Dassault Systemes.

This presentation provides an introduction to the event, its hosts, and the Unified Architecture Framework (UAF), covering its purpose, adoption, and roadmap. It highlights upcoming features in UAF 1.3 and examines the development status, key additions, and challenges of UAF V2.

KEYNOTE: Accelerating Developmental Test and Evaluation (DT&E): Using UAF for Collaborative Innovation and Standards-Based Integration

Presenter: Kyle G Snow, DAF 96 Test Wing Digital Engineering Lead

The Developmental Test, Evaluation and Assessment (DTE&A) office of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) Mission Capabilities group convened a Hack-a-Thon 23-26 September in order to exercise several core aspects of the developmental Test and Evaluation as a Continuum (dTEaaC) concept. This event not only served as outreach to over 200 members of the developmental Test and Evaluation (T&E) community but also functioned as an accelerated learning environment across the DoD enterprise for government, industry, and academia. This presentation will discuss the findings from this event, in particular, how Capability-Based Acquisition Reference Architecture (CapyBARA)—a standards-based approach to integrating Model-Based System's Engineering activities across the domains from Mission Engineering (UAF), Systems Engineering (SysML), and Test & Evaluation (UML Test Profile v2)— where used to demonstrate traceability from capability gap identification through verification and validation of system performance.

A day in life of sugar plant 'System of Systems view' depiction using UAF

Presenter: Devalla Lakshmi Satish, IoT-DE DT MBSE Solution Lead, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.

The sugar industry faces many challenges includes seasonal nature, low production capacity, efficiency of machines, transport delays and by-product disposal. It is important to account different System of Systems (SoS) scenarios like continuous production and disposal, service planning during transport delays, real-time health check of systems and preventive maintenance, and tracking of operational parameters reliability, efficiency and throughput. In nutshell optimize engineering, production and service for highest reliability, efficiency and maximum throughput.

A day in life of enterprise systems of sugar plant is systematically modelled using Unified Architecture Framework (UAF). Sugar plant mission and goals like energy efficiency improvement 18%, reliability improvement 95%, and capability like Accelerated engineering and manufacturing, predictive guidance in service and closed looping are modelled using strategic viewpoint. Operational viewpoint is used to model requirements, behaviour/scenarios, system context/structure and exchanges between different systems which are realized by digital twin of sugar plant systems. Service viewpoint used to model service level specifications for capabilities like digital maintenance manuals with AR/VR and operational activity instructions at plant site. Personal viewpoint used to model roles and operational activities of site engineer, diagnostics engineer, simulation & reliability engineer, design engineer and manufacturing engineer. Actual SoS structure and behaviour verified using activity, state chart and parametric diagrams. Trade-off studies carried out to optimize actual engineering, production and service of sugar plant for reliability and efficiency parameters using actual resources viewpoint. Traceability between various artefacts is created using traceability map/matrix to visualize end-to-end traceability of UAF constructs.

UAF helped to predict and visualize all possible engineering, production and service behaviours with a systematic approach. Optimized engineering, production and service ensured highest possible sugar output and reliability. Overall reliability achieved nearly 95%, service predictions above 95% and quick engineering change time reduced to 50% due to design re-use, quick impact assessment and traceability.

Enabling Enterprise Transformation in the Department of the Air Force with a UAF-based Enterprise Architecture Model

Presenter: Henry Chambers, Chief Enterprise Architect, Studio SE LTD

Abstract – In November 2023, the Enterprise Architecture (EA) team recognized the need for standardized DCMA terminology to inform a comprehensive taxonomy referred to as the Architecture Management - Information (Am-If), in the Unified Architecture Framework (UAF) ontology. The Am-If will captures accurate, authoritative, and consistent definitions for Agency business processes, data, technology, and security standards used in the architecture development process. The EA team determined DCMA policy serves as the best source for this information and as a baseline to create a well-defined set of values to mature DCMA's EA.

To achieve this goal, the EA team collected over 660 policy documents. Over the course of seven months, the team successfully extracted more than 28,000 rows of data including 2,172 unique terms, 2,011 unique acronyms, and 1,899 unique references from DCMA policy.

The EA team uses Unicom System Architect (SA) and the UAF to manage the authoritative enterprise architecture components for DCMA. Beyond providing standard definitions, the Am-If contributes to a taxonomy that organizes and classifies the elements, relationships, and categories of the Agency's enterprise architecture. The AM-IF consist of ten reports that enable Agency users to filter and view Agency policy, Federal Acquisition Regulation, Joint Electronic Library, Defense Acquisition University, and National Institute of Standards and Technology terms, definitions, acronyms, and references. This is the first effort of its kind to list these values sourced directly from policy and authoritative sources in DCMA. This enabled the EA team to filter terminology, import it into our tool suite, and marks a significant milestone in the team's effort to collect, organize, and structure information.

As the team works with Capability Boards, stakeholders, and designated representatives to identify operational activities, performers, resources, exchanges, and interfaces, the Am-If will help standardize inputs into the DCMA EA utilizing the SA tool suite.

Enabling Enterprise Transformation in the Department of the Air Force with a UAF-based Enterprise Architecture Model

Presenter: James N Martin, PhD, Distinguished Engineer, The Aerospace

Corporation At the UAF Summit in 2024, Mr Jeffrey Eggers, Air Force ISR Chief Architect, presented his vision for how to optimize Force Design for the USAF using concepts and principles of enterprise architectural design. This is to ensure the forces and supporting organizational elements are well integrated at both the mission and technical levels. An enterprise architecture (EA) model developed using UAF, he says, can help the USAF develop and enhance its capabilities across AF mission areas and across the community involved in joint force operations. This talk will present the results from building an EA model using UAF for the ISR Chief Architect for the Air Force. This was accomplished through several steps of architecture model development: (1) problem framing, (2) methodology design, (3) data collection, (4) model creation, (5) model deployment, and finally to step (6) model utilization. The methodology design focused on creating modeling patterns based on the UAF metamodel elements, generating model queries to interrogate the model to answer key questions from senior decision makers, and building a pathfinder model to test the methodology and determine its ability to provide timely and accurate alternative proposed solutions to the hard problems that face the USAF and its mission partners. The EA model is initially focused on the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) mission but will eventually be expanded to cover the other AF core missions: Air and Space Superiority, Rapid Global Mobility, Global Strike, and Command and Control. We will discuss our lessons learned, end user experiences, and plans for future development.

Modeling the FAA's National Airspace System

Presenter: Patrick Mehard, Senior Fellow,Digital Engineering, Noblis

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Airspace System (NAS) Enterprise Architecture Models (EAM) are in the process of being transformed from a user-modified version of the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) 1.5 to a Unified Architecture Framework (UAF). During this transformation, the FAA will link the developed UAF Architecture models with their Enterprise Data Architecture models to capture and decompose the complex NAS into its constituent parts and identify internal and external data flows. Combining the FAA's Enterprise level UAF with its data models provides detailed data thread traceability through the UAF views and analysis across the enterprise. This presentation provides an overview of the FAA's UAF modeling approach and how the Enterprise Data architecture models, captured in UML class diagrams, are linked to the Operational Information (Op-If) and Resource Information (Rs-If) view specifications in UAF. This also allows the FAA to apply data tagging templates to the architecture enforcing zero-trust data security at the data layer.

Securing Your Eggs in Multiple Baskets

Presenter: Mitchell Brooks, SystemX

The global supply chain is a complex system of systems made up of and relying on other complex systems of systems (SoS) to achieve its goals. To take a typical example, Enterprise A is supplied essential parts on a regular basis to manufacture its products. To place the order requires global financial systems, integrated email systems, the internet, multiple telecommunications systems, and supply software provided by large companies. To deliver the parts may require air and maritime transportation systems, the rail network, interstate highway systems, road haulage companies, state and local transportation systems and so forth. When any of these complex systems fail, the impact can be global, and the results catastrophic. Recent examples include the shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the COVID pan-demic, computer chip shortages delaying the assembly and sales of cars, and, most recently, the baby formula shortage. These were due to disruptions in the supply chain caused by an overreliance on single sourced suppliers who failed to deliver, transportation disruptions, outsourcing of critical parts, supplies, medicines to distant countries, and/or an overreliance on "Just In Time" for inventory management. This is the case of placing too many eggs in too few baskets, and often just one basket. Counterfeit or substandard parts and products can enter the supply chain via graft, breaks in chain of custody, or carelessness. This has included critical mechanical parts on aircraft, chips containing spyware, and substandard or out of date medicines substituted for the real thing resulting in serious illness and death. This complex SoS needs to be examined, studied, and understood in the same way as a mission critical system; threats, vulnerabilities, and risks need to be identified and mitigated and assurance cases defined to ensure a solid and reliable supply chain. This paper will look at the supply chain of an example factory system to determine how some of these problems can be predicted, prevented, mitigated, and solved using the UAF, RAAML and assurance case techniques.

Application of UAF to Digital DoD Acquisitions: Breaking the Sound Barrier, One Mach at a Time

Presenter: Leonard Brownlow, Booz Allen Hamilton

There has been talk about doing Model-Based Acquisition for a number of years. So, we decided to make a run for it by applying the tried-and-true Systems Engineering approach to lay out the architecture for the Acquisition approach. And then we applied standard Enterprise Modeling methods and tools using the Unified Architecture Framework (UAF). We then devised a set of models and other SE artifacts to serve as the basis for Digital Acquisition. We will share lessons learned and special challenges that we encountered.

Space Domain Enterprise Architecture Reference Model

Presenter: Kyle Alvarez, Senior Member of Technical Staff, The Aerospace Corporation

As Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) becomes more widely accepted across disciplines and specifically within the space domain a common approach towards modeling enterprise architectures in that domain is critical. Having a common approach ensures consistency in what is delivered and what is shared across groups to promote inter-organizational collaboration. This presentation is on the Space Enterprise Architecture (SEA) references models. The SEA reference model comprises nine separate model libraries built using the Unified Architecture Framework (UAF). When these model libraries are used together, they can capture space system characteristics such as physical location, operational status, operators, networks etc. It also helps enterprise modelers to document space enterprises in a consistent fashion. The SEA models provide a baseline set of features for space systems and how they interface with one another as well as a model pattern for how to address what-if mission threads and kill chain analyses for the space domain. The SEA's focus on space enterprise modeling for the completion of mission engineering studies is a case study in capturing the needs and lingo of a customer and translating it into a methodology powered by a generic modeling language that was not designed explicitly for the customer's lingo. Defense and nondefense government organizations and their contractors who do work on mission architecting modeling would find interest in the approach taken to develop a methodology to standardize the creation of the customer's desired mission architecture views. This presentation's goal is to provide the approach the SEA models have taken to capture space systems in a federated digital ecosystem to promote enterprise modeling reuse via an example mission thread analysis leveraging SEA. Through this, the presenters' goal is for other model practitioners to leverage the SEA model pattern or concepts in their own mission thread or kill chain analyses.