Most Americans are familiar with artificial intelligence and automation within science fiction. Technological advances may result in the fulfillment of things that once seemed impossible, such as Amazon using drones to deliver purchases to your house within 30 minutes (USA Today), or self-driving cars allowing you to take a nap on your drive from Richmond to Orlando. These advances in semi-automation and automation technologies are poised to drastically change military operations.
System integration is the concept of analyzing trade-offs within functional areas of an organization/process, and determining which levels each functional area should operate at in order to produce the most inexpensive system while meeting desired performance/service objectives. This “big picture/high level” system management concept is essential, because optimizing each individual function may actually sub-optimize the totality of the system. One field that has experienced a significant shift towards total integration