Editorial – ITEA Journal – December 2025

Context

The year is drawing to a close, and what a disruptive one it has been! Time Magazine’s person of the year for 2024 is a political force that has dominated disruption throughout the year, while Time Magazine’s person of the year this year is all about the impact of artificial intelligence and its continued disruptive effects. I am not judging whether these disruptors are good or bad, just that they are change agents just about everywhere they are applied. Equally significant has been the increasing threat posed by aggressive nation-states and actors with little or no democratic basis, seeking to ruthlessly threaten and fight for territory and resources in ways not seen at such a scale for eighty years. The ability of these aggressors to develop capability quickly and to sustain impressive production has challenged democratic nations to be faster in embracing new technology and to deliver it faster, with scale and agility. Software functionality delivers that ability to change, but to do so cost-effectively and securely is the challenge against cyber threats. AI helps deliver speed and greater autonomy, but again, only if it can be done safely and securely. Rising to the challenge has seen alliances strengthen, such as the three-eyes AUKUS Pillars, and the new multilateral security ‘Quad’ between the US, Australia, India, and Japan. Disturbance and threat are perhaps best reflected in name changes like the new Department of War in the US and the new organisations and appointments in the UK and Australia for their Director of Armaments to manage all Defence acquisition therein.

What does this have to do with a Journal of T&E?

Everything! For my three decades of T&E practice, T&E was increasingly relegated to a subordinate role in Systems Engineering as part of Verification and Validation. T&E was stymied in establishing that requirements are met for design acceptance and delivered systems are suitable once delivered for operational acceptance — as many have noted, ‘kept to the right’. Risk was driven out of the process by increasingly long and linear acquisitions, hardware before software, software delivered once and not iterated, tested only to meet requirements, not once put before users for fear they might induce change. Any program with new technological risk inevitably bucked the trend by being test-led, prototyping with upfront user input, and frequent and direct software changes. However, these innovative efforts were curtailed by increasing contractual, travel, and personnel restrictions out of all proportion to the cost and importance of the programs. In contrast, during the last five years, T&E staff have been increasingly called upon to do innovative development through test-led prototyping and are the ones embracing software functionality, model-based systems engineering, and testing of AI-enabled systems. Some of the contractual shackles and ingenious project ways to certify without a test are dissolving. On the current trajectory of acquisition reform, we may yet debunk the seemingly innocuous but deleterious mantra that “The key to Project Success is Getting Requirements Right”. It can be replaced by a confident test-led “What requirements can be met and do they suffice?” Unfortunately, travel and personnel restrictions still seem misaligned to the urgency and change sought. As soon as an organisation has to reform, it reorganises, freezes budgets, and loses impetus, contrary to the very reason for the reform in the first place. It is hard enough getting testing front and centre, resourced, only to see travel budgets locked down and testing not proceed, or without key oversight.

These shifts and tensions see our December Edition focused on doing test planning and management quicker and digitally, squarely seeking test-led adaptive acquisition, positioned for threat-led re-test through service (i.e., digital twins). Articles also address metrics and methods for evaluating cyber threats, IT reliability and availability, and then improving T&E around explosive effects. As anyone closely watching the hypersonic missile strikes on Ukrainian cities will attest, kinematics and blast effects on buildings and personnel are changing as significantly as drone warfare. Our test standards and metrics must also adapt.

I must thank our two guest editors curating the technical contributions from the successful DATAWorks for our September Edition; namely, Dr Madeline Stricklin of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Vicky Nilsen of NASA Headquarters. They did an outstanding job for ITEA. I encourage you to attend the 2026 DATAWorks in Washington 21-23 April [https://dataworks.testscience.org/] and ITEA’s AI in T&E Workshop also in Washington 17-18 March [https://itea.org/event/2026-ai-in-te-forum/].

Our first article is by Dr Jose Alvarado (AFOTEC) and Professor Thomas Bradley (Colorado State University) on how to extend model-driven test design in a model-based systems engineering environment to create Cameo auto-generated draft test plans. Their case study on an E-X airborne multi-sensor platform is both encouraging and an excellent teaching resource. The second article, by Captain Jake Kurzhals, Dr John Colombi, Dr David Jacques, and Major Jordan Stern (AFIT), also examines speeding up test planning in a digital environment. They research parsimonious extraction of key T&E profiles and schema to inform future model-based test management. Again, they develop a test management profile in a case study using a digitally documented fictitious drone, creating confidence and another great teaching resource. Our third article supports the same topic and is by a mixed industry and academic team: Mr Erwin Sable (Booz Allen Hamilton), Professor Abram Walton (Integra-Management Associates), Associate Professor Bonny Banerjee (University of Memphis), Dr Policarpio Soberanis (ANSYS), and Dr Sandeep Patel (KBR). Their report will please business leaders trying to keep up with digital engineering supported by model-based systems engineering, as it examines the transferable role of digital representations, especially digital twins. They align terminology, describe how to synchronise digital representations through life, and even provide key contract language guidance, all aligned to the US Department of War instruction on digital engineering.

Our fourth article is by Dr Bill ‘Data’ Bryant (Modern Technology Solutions Inc.) concerning how to use probabilistic attack trees to provide early cyber-risk evaluation and threat mitigation. He pleasingly includes sensitivity analysis, uncertainty analysis, and validation sections; the raison d’être of modelling. Any cybersecurity T&E warrants inclusion of Data’s clear approach as his methods bring discriminating and thus rigorous automated testing through-life. Our fifth article is another educational trove for important T&E metrics by Mr Tom Roltsch (MANTECH International Corporation). He previously outlined for the ITEA Journal on classical T&E metrics for reliability and availability [https://itea.org/journals/volume-45-2/the-robust-classical-mtbf-test/]. In this latest article, he outlines five inferential methodologies for evaluating the reliability and availability of IT systems, especially for automated through-life testing. We are indebted to experienced practitioners like Data and Tom for providing such clear educational treatises in areas that capability programs find so hard to contract.

Our sixth article is the second coming from the recent efforts to establish the first UK Workshop devoted to T&E. The article is by Major Angela Laycock (British Army) and supervisors from the Cranfield University, Dr Rachael Hazael, Dr Aimee Helliker, and Dr Richard Critchley. Her research seeks to update blast hazard and weapons effects testing to account for new building materials and more modular building methods, especially from large free-field blasts. Do consider visiting the UK’s second T&E workshop on 9-10 June [https://itea.org/event/2026-uk-te-conference/] and maybe visiting key UK reforms in T&E (Armaments Director), industry, or universities with T&E heritage like Cranfield. Our seventh article comes from Commander Ryan ‘PC’ Agte, Dr Jean Paul Santos (Naval Air Warfare Centre), and Colonel Gregory ‘Bo’ Marzolf (Colorado State University) and concerns proposals to broaden use of autonomous flight termination systems, especially to replace legacy line-of-sight termination test infrastructure. Hopefully, the burgeoning space launch market, autonomous drone and advanced missile test teams can follow PC’s findings.

Our semi-regular book review is again by Dr Mark London (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University) and features one of the very few textbooks suitable to replace a plethora of government handbooks on T&E for introductory courses and subjects. The book he reviews is by Dr Avner Engel titled ‘Verification, Validation and Testing of Engineered Systems.’ Note how the title doesn’t subordinate testing to the other two terms! Having recently invested in a modern comprehensive textbook on aircraft design of 1004 pages, I can attest to the benefits for seminal learning and junior practitioners of amalgamating consensus knowledge into a good contemporary textbook.

There are no dedicated articles on T&E Workforce in this Edition, although many of our technical articles do address educational implications for the workforce. So, please do consider this important area for potential future submissions. We have one article in work on the big ITEA reforms to Certified T&E Practitioner (CTEP), including refined courses, a new exam database, and selected key readings. However, that article will necessarily wait until the March edition as we have set the release of the Edition before Christmas this year (17-20^th December) so we can be in your stockings.

On behalf of the dedicated ITEA Journal team, I wish readers a Merry Christmas. There are very few articles received for March 2026, so in addition to reading the December Edition, I encourage you to spend some time writing and to submit early in the New Year. May it be a peaceful year!

Yours, Keith