This study applies an augmentation to systems engineering methodology based on the integration of adaptive capacity, which produces enhanced resilience in technological systems that operate in complex operating environments. The implementation of this methodology enhances system resistance to top-level function failure or accelerates the system’s functional recovery in the event of a top-level function failure due to functional requirement shift, evolutions, or perturbations. Specifically, this study employs a methodology to integrate adaptive resilience and demonstrates key aspects of its implementation in a relevant explosive reactive armor (ERA) system case study. The research and resulting methodology supplements and enhances traditional systems engineering processes by offering systems designers a method to integrate adaptive capacity into systems, enhancing their resilient resistance, or recovery to top-level function failure in complex operating environments. This research expands traditional and contemporary systems engineering, design, and integration methodologies, by explicitly addressing system adaptation and resilience. The utility of this research and methodology is demonstrated through integration of adaptive capacity in ERA, demonstrating how a single adaptive resilient design can have broader solution sets and enhanced performance against the myriad of threats this technology defeats.