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Statistical Methods for Testing and Evaluating Defense Systems Interim Report (1995) / Chapter Skim
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6 Efforts Toward a Taxonomic Structure of DoD Systems for Operational Testing
Pages 41-46

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From page 41...
... PRELIMINARY WORK TOWARD A TAXONOMIC STRUCTURE The objective of the panel's efforts in this area is to develop a taxonomic structure that can support, and help structure, analyses of the use of statistical techniques for the efficient testing and evaluation, especially operational testing, of military systems. The term "taxonomic structure" is used to emphasize that the exact nature of any proposed scheme is still under consideration, and will evolve as the work proceeds.
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From page 42...
... - To what extent are performance evaluations dependent upon indirect measurements and infer To what extent is relevant prior knowledge available and able to be used (1) in the design of evaluation studies or (2)
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From page 43...
... It might be said that these questions go beyond the narrower issues that are normally addressed in operational testing. But to the extent that operational tests can be designed to shed light on such questions, they will provide valuable information that bears directly on the decisions operational testing .
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From page 44...
... Questions here include the following: · To what extent is test range instrumentation adequate for assessing the system performance during the operational tests? · To what extent might the act of instrumenting the test articles interfere with their performance?
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From page 45...
... Recognition of these dimensions raises another set of relevant considerations: while the milestone paradigm is based on notions of phases called development, production, and operations and support, it is increasingly true that development continues to proceed over the lifetime of many modern weapon systems. Yet it is also often the case that one may not understand how the current version of a weapon system "works," in particular, what the fault modes are of complex electronic subsystems, even after we have begun to field it.
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From page 46...
... FUTURE WORK Building on the preliminary work described above, the panel will develop a taxonomic structure that provides categories of defense systems that require qualitatively different test strategies. To this end we will examine various databases for their utility in classifying recent and current systems and in helping us determine the relative sizes of various cells of the taxonomy structure.
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