Reforming the Defense Equipment Technical Management System Driven by MBSE and the Digital Thread

Abstract

Document-centric technical management shows systemic bottlenecks for complex equipment across the life cycle, including unstable requirements, frequent interface changes, configuration drift, and weak quality closures. This paper proposes a five-element architecture-Process, Organization, Data, Tools, and Metrics-driven by MBSE (Model-Based Systems Engineering) and the Digital Thread, and builds a governance framework coupled to SRR/PDR/CDR/TRR, the three baselines (functional/allocation/product), and TRL/MRL. We elaborate three key mechanisms-configuration and change control, requirements traceability and interface management, reliability growth and FRACAS closure-and provide implementation guidelines on top-level design and governance, toolchain and data management, and staged pilots. Using illustrative simulated data, we demonstrate KPI improvement paths and dashboard styles to show operability. The approach can improve requirements stability and configuration conformance, reduce interface change rate and late-phase defects, shorten lead time, and lay the foundation for in-service data and digital twins as well as AI-enabled requirement quality assessment, defect prediction, and decision support.