OVERVIEW OF THE AIR VEHICLE TRAINING SYSTEMS DEMONSTRATION PROJECT

STARS is an ARPA project aimed at advancing the management, quality, a daptability, and reliability of DoD software intensive systems. Over t he years, the STARS project has gradually focused on enabling a paradi gm shift of DoD software practices to megaprogramming. The central con cept is a process-driven, two-life-cycle approach to software developm ent. One life-cycle spans the creation and enrichment of an organizati on's capabilities for a family of related products, or domain engineer ing. The other life-cycle spans the construction and delivery of indiv idual products from the domain, or application engineering. This appro ach may provide substantial opportunities for leveraged reuse, that is , planned use of adapted software components in multiple products. Muc h of the effort to date has been for developing tools and processes th at support megaprogramming. The STARS project is now in a transition a nd demonstration phase. One of the demonstration projects is in the do main of simulator-based training, specifically the U.S. Navy's domain of Air Vehicle Training Systems. If megaprogramming proves useful in t his domain, it promises dramatic increases in productivity along with corresponding reductions in the cost of building simulations.