ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has used a concept referred to as Technology Readiness Level or TRL as a means to assess the maturity of a particular technology and developed a scale to compare technologies. Figure 6.1 summarizes the various stages of the TRL (https://www.nasa.gov/content/technology-readiness-level/). In 1999, the Department of Defense (DoD) adopted a similar TRL concept to assess emerging technologies and incorporated it into their programs to have a formalized methodology for technology transition. The DoD, Technology Readiness Assessment (TRA) Guidance is a document prepared by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and is “a systematic, metricsbased process that assesses the maturity of, and the risk associated with, critical technologies to be used in Major Defense Acquisition Programs (Department of Defense, TRA Guidance, 2011).
