Modernizing acquisition through digital engineering and AI

By Steven H. Dam|December 2024

The Systems Engineering Technical Committee supports efforts to define, develop and disseminate modern systems engineering practices.

The U.S. Department of Defense continued its decades-long effort to streamline the defense acquisition system. In January at AIAA’s SciTech Forum, the Department of the Air Force held a workshop on digital materiel management aimed at streamlining through the application of digital engineering techniques. The goal is to create a consistent methodology that can be applied across the military services to quicken the adoption of new technologies.

The Air Force and Space Force followed up on this work in February, announcing a plan to make “sweeping changes to maintain superiority amid Great Power Competition,” according to a press release. These changes, comprising 24 “near-term and longer-term initiatives,” include the creation of an Integrated Capabilities Office “to lead capability development and resource prioritization to drive Department of the Air Force modernization investments” and the establishment of a Space Futures Command “that develops and validates concepts, conducts experimentation and wargames, and performs mission area design.”

In the area of modeling and simulation, U.S. Reps. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Jack Bergman (R-MI) in February called for increased utilization of those techniques to more rapidly update U.S. infrastructure. They presented separate keynotes at the National Training and Simulation Association’s Congressional M&S Leadership Summit. Also during the summit, Dan Hettema, director of digital engineering, modeling and simulation within the Pentagon’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, discussed the progress toward implementing DoDI 5000.97. This December 2023 directive described policies and procedures “for implementing and using digital engineering in the development and sustainment of defense systems.”

In April, during the XPONENTIAL 2024 trade show for autonomous vehicles and weapons systems, the U.S. Navy and various companies conducted a series of “Pacific Pivot” outdoor demonstrations. Among them, Skydio of California flew a drone to demonstrate airborne monitoring. Also part of these demonstrations was a warfighter vignette, in which a SAAB CB90 ship acted as an attack vehicle that was detected by the surveillance systems and chased away by U.S. Coast Guard interceptors. The results of these demonstrations were captured in a mission-based systems engineering tool for further evaluation at later events.

In May, the Lifecycle Modeling Organization hosted its hybrid MBSE-CON 2024 conference on the topic of how the development of new languages and capabilities plays into acquisition. During his keynote, Army executive Jeremy Lanman discussed how digital engineering is assisting with cutting costs at the Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation.

Another technology of interest was artificial intelligence. In June, the Systems Engineering Resource Center hosted its third annual Archimedes Initiative Workshop, bringing together engineers from four U.S. and European research institutes to discuss modernizing systems engineering principles, practices and methodologies. The main discussion revolved around “Trustworthy AI,” stemming from the concern that AI-generated results are often in error. Martin Stanley of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology discussed how NIST’s AI 100-1 standard, released in 2023, can help organizations minimize the impacts of these risks.

In June, Defense Department officials discussed their efforts to develop a digital acquisition “vision” during the Digital Engineering for Defense Summit. There, the Test Resource Management Center announced it will develop a digital engineering infrastructure, as required by DoDI 5000.97. In September, the center with the Pentagon’s Office of Developmental Test, Evaluation, and Assessments hosted Hackathon 2.0 that brought together some 100 attendees to apply various digital engineering software to accelerate the development of systems.

Contributors: Mathew O. French, Walter E. Hammond, Esma Karagoz and Marilee J. Wheaton