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Commercial and independent market assessments continue to reveal a strong market desire for a supersonic business jet capable of meeting the requirements for supersonic, overland flight. However, the challenge of meeting the as-yet undefined regulations for overland flight, as well as meeting current and future noise and emission regulations, is daunting. An integrated modeling and simulation environment, based on the creation of response surface metamodels, allows for the rapid evaluation of a design space. From this environment the effects on metrics such as emissions, economics, sonic boom profiles and noise levels can rapidly be seen and manipulated. Such an environment also allows the application of technologies to the vehicle in order to evaluate their potential impact on the system-level metrics.

Several unique aspects of the design of hypersonic aerospace systems necessitate a truly multidisciplinary approach from the outset of the program. These coupled with a vague or changing requirements environment, provide an impetus for the development of a systematic and unified approach for the exploration and evaluation of alternative hypersonic vehicle concepts. The method formulated and outlined in this paper is founded upon non-deterministic conceptual & preliminary design formulations introduced over the past decade and introduces the concept of viewing system level requirements in a similar manner. The proposed method is then implemented for the concept exploration and design of a Hypersonic Strike Fighter in the presence of ambiguous open and/or evolving requirements.

The accepted paradigm in aerospace systems design was to design systems sequentially and iteratively to maximize performance based on minimum weight. The traditional paradigm does not work in the rapidly changing global environment. A paradigm shift from the norm of “design for performance” to “design for affordability and quality” has been occurring in recent decades to respond to the changing global environment. Observations were made regarding new tenets needed to bridge the gap from the old to the new. These tenets include new methods and techniques for designing complex systems due to uncertainty and mulit-dimensionality, consideration of the life cycle of the system, and the methods needed to assess breakthrough technologies to meet aggressive goals of the future. The Technology Identification, Evaluation, and Selection method was proposed as a possible solution to the paradigm shift.