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Foundations of Mission Engineering

Gain the concepts, vocabulary and applied methods to practise mission engineering in the Australian defence and national security context and construct a Mission Thread and Mission Engineering Thread using a structured model-based approach.

Next Dates: 29 Sep
Duration: 4 weeks
Delivery mode: In-person; + online
Location: UNSW Canberra City

Price (AUD inc. GST): $2,990
Spots remaining: AVAILABLE

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Course summary

From mission problem to mission thread

Foundations of Mission Engineering sets out the concepts, vocabulary and applied methods required to practise mission engineering in the Australian defence, national security and critical industry context. Over four weeks, you'll progress from an entry-level understanding of mission engineering to the ability to construct a valid Mission Thread (MT) and Mission Engineering Thread (MET) for a single operational domain, reaching Mission Engineering Competency Framework (MECF) Level 1 (Supervised Practitioner) on completion. The course is the first of three stackable micro-credentials in UNSW Canberra's mission engineering curriculum and can also be articulated as credit toward UNSW's postgraduate digital engineering program.

Who will benefit

Engineers, program managers, operators and capability professionals across Defence, government and industry who need to frame mission problems and engage credibly in capability decision-making.
Systems engineers, Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) practitioners and Test & Evaluation professionals seeking a structured entry point into mission engineering.
Data, AI/ML and cyber practitioners embedding assurance and analytics into the mission and digital thread.

Course is suitable for

Learners with a tertiary qualification in engineering, science or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience in a Defence, government or industry environment. No prior mission engineering experience is assumed. This course is theoretical and conceptual in focus - no prior experience with MBSE tools is required; hands-on digital tool exposure is introduced in Course 2: Digital Mission Engineering.
Learners without a systems engineering or operational background may prefer to complete Mission Engineering and Integration, UNSW Canberra's existing online awareness-level short course, first.

Delivered by experts

Professor Braden McGrath

Professor of Practice in Digital Engineering, School of Systems and Computing, UNSW Canberra

Professor of Practice in Digital Engineering in the School of Systems and Computing, UNSW Canberra.
A Chartered Professional Engineer with 35 years of operational research, test and evaluation experience across Australian and US military aviation. Formerly Chief Technology Officer at QinetiQ Australia.
Completed advanced mission engineering training at Old Dominion University's Center for Mission Engineering.

Dr Ahmed Dawoud

Lecturer in Digital Engineering, School of Systems and Computing, UNSW Canberra

Dr Ahmed Dawoud is a lecturer at UNSW Canberra whose work spans digital engineering, mission engineering, applied AI and cyber operations. He has held research roles with the Defence Science and Technology Group and the Industrial AI Research Centre at the University of South Australia, alongside teaching appointments at several Australian universities. His research applies mission engineering, digital twins and digital threads to improve traceability and decision-making across the capability lifecycle. He also works on temporal modelling, anomaly and change detection, decision-making under uncertainty, network characterisation, intrusion detection, software-defined network security and threat modelling. Ahmed brings a practical, research-grounded perspective that connects mission engineering with the AI and cyber considerations increasingly embedded in contemporary defence capability.

About the course

Mission Engineering in the Australian Defence context

Mission engineering is an emerging discipline that extends traditional systems engineering to the deliberate planning, analysis and assessment of missions in complex, multi-actor operational environments. Driven by the Defence Digital Engineering Strategy (2024), there is an urgent and sustained need for a workforce of mission-engineering-literate professionals who can frame mission problems, decompose them into analysable threads and communicate findings to decision-makers.

The course integrates current DoD reference materials: the Mission Engineering Guide (MEG v2.0, 2023) and Mission Architecture Systems Graphical notation (MASG v1.0, 2025), with the INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook (5e), situated throughout in the Australian Defence operational and policy environment.

Why enrol in this course

Build genuine mission engineering literacy

Understand how mission engineering relates to project management, systems engineering and digital engineering, the US DoD Mission Engineering Guide methodology, authoritative sources of truth, digital threads, MBSE fundamentals and system readiness levels.

Practise structured problem decomposition

Apply techniques to frame mission problems, articulate goals and objectives, develop scenarios and build a Measures of Effectiveness / Measures of Performance / Measures of Suitability (MOE/MOP/MOS) hierarchy.

Build practical modelling skills

Construct a Mission Thread and Mission Engineering Thread using a structured modelling approach, building the foundational skills that carry directly into the tool-supported environment introduced in subsequent micro-credential mission engineering courses.

Key features

Model-based mission engineering

Construct a Mission Thread and Mission Engineering Thread using MASG v1.0 notation.

Stackable, MECF-aligned credential

The first of three micro-credentials articulating toward the Professional Certificate, Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma and Master of Digital Engineering. Course 2: Digital Mission Engineering introduces the digital MBSE tools.

Taught by operational practitioners

Led by facilitators bringing decades of mission engineering, flight-test and capability-development experience, alongside applied AI and cyber operations research.

Learning outcomes

Building mission engineering competency

By the end of this course, you will be able to describe the fundamentals of mission engineering, characterise a mission problem, apply a structured modelling approach to a mission scenario and construct a Mission Thread and Mission Engineering Thread for a single operational domain. Assessment is applied and practitioner-focused: you'll produce a single-domain Mission Thread/Mission Engineering Thread artefact using MASG notation, submitted at the end of Week 4.

What you'll learn

Skills/competencies/knowledge that would be gained through this course:

Describe the fundamentals, evolution and systems context of mission engineering, including its relationship to systems engineering and digital engineering, the US DoD Mission Engineering Guide methodology, authoritative sources of truth, system readiness levels, and application in the Australian defence context.
Apply structured problem-decomposition techniques to characterise a mission: framing mission problems, articulating goals and objectives, developing scenarios, and constructing an MOE/MOP/MOS hierarchy.
Understand industry-standard Mission Engineering software tools and explain the benefits and limitations of digital tool-supported approaches to Mission Engineering practice.
Construct a Mission Thread and a Mission Engineering Thread for a single-domain scenario using MASG notation and model-based approaches and articulate the capability gaps and the implications for interoperability, assurance, and readiness in decision support.

Topics covered

This course covers the following topics:

Instructional Workshop Day 1 (Week 1): Mission engineering fundamentals, the MEG v2.0 five-step methodology, the Australian Defence context, and the MOE/MOP/MOS hierarchy.
Instructional Workshop Day 2 (Week 1): Authoritative sources of truth, MBSE fundamentals, MASG v1.0 notation, and interactive workshops constructing a Mission Thread and Mission Engineering Thread from a mission scenario.
Ongoing Case Study Analysis (Weeks 1–4): Sustained applied work building into the summative Mission Thread / Mission Engineering Thread assessment.
Post-course reflection (Week 4): Applicability to your workplace context and pathway guidance to Course 2: Digital Mission Engineering, where you'll apply these skills using industry-standard MBSE tools.

Put your skills to the test. Bonus opportunity.

Foundations of Mission Engineering is the entry point to UNSW's Professional Certificate in Mission Engineering - a 12 UoC program that stacks the mission engineering and digital engineering micro-credentials into a credential articulating toward postgraduate study in Digital Engineering.