DoD Digital Engineering, From Aspiration to Commitment

I attended a series of briefings at a recent DoD Digital Engineering, Modeling & Simulation Community of Practice (DEM&S CoP) meeting. At this meeting a Digital Engineering (DE) leader from a defense prime noted that a key benefit of DE is the rate at which impacts can be understood when source data changes. When data is handled as models which are interoperable with the tools that inform decisions, then better-informed, more-timely decisions can be made. This foundational shift in how we employ data has the potential to dramatically enhance solutions available to warfighters, accelerate fielding, and reduce costs. Better, Faster, and Cheaper.

In June 2018, following extensive discussions in forums such as the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), the ODASD for Systems Engineering fired the first Digital Engineering shot across the DoD bow with the publication of the Digital Engineering Strategy (DES). In his foreword, Michael Griffin noted his expectations that DE would help conduct engineering in more integrated virtual environments to increase customer and vendor engagement, improve threat response timelines, foster infusion of technology, reduce cost of documentation, and impact sustainment affordability.

In our last article we discussed Mission-Based Capability Assessment (Mission Engineering) as a data-driven approach to designing the future force. If this is one of the many what’s that has to happen as part of a DoD solution lifecycle, then Digital Engineering is how it will be accomplished.

The DES core is 5 Goals and Focus Areas which have proven to be every bit as important today as they were nearly six years ago when the DES was first published. These are: (please see the freely downloadable version of the DES for a chapter describing each of these)

1.       Formalize the development, integration, and use of models to inform enterprise and program decision making

2.       Provide an enduring, authoritative source of truth (ASOT)

3.       Incorporate technological innovation to improve the engineering practice

4.       Establish supporting infrastructure and environments to perform activities, collaborate, and communicate across stakeholders

5.       Transform the culture and workforce to adopt and support digital engineering across the lifecycle

As a new acquisition core theme, DE has proven to have more staying power than other themes which have come and gone in a faction of this time. DE is not an isolated idea, but rather a capstone integrating concept which is riding the waves of numerous contemporary technology and systems engineering trends. A few of these are:

1.       Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) – Data as Models --> Accessible, Shareable, Authoritative, Evolvable

2.       Recognition that data ownership has tangible value --> Investing in Data as Models has sound business value

3.       Commercial Systems – Rapid tech refresh rates --> Business and engineering processes must accelerate to keep pace with contemporary technologies

4.       Full-lifecycle assessment, Digital Threads --> Subsequent system lifecycle stages are not an additional binder on a shelf, they are a living evolution of the system’s data description

5.       Team of Teams Dynamic Collaboration Processes – Cloud --> Cloud-deployed tools let teams of teams from around the world collaborate with unprecedented agility and velocity

6.       Cloud Data Processing Scalability – Horizontal & Vertical --> Cloud data processing and storage can often accelerate results by 10, 100, 1,000X while increasing team cost by only tens of percent. Can teams’ data applications afford to not be “in the cloud”?

7.       Cloud-based Data Analytics --> Reducing data to actionable insights in the cloud dramatically reduces costs and accelerates outcomes relative to more classical thick client statistical apps

8.       Machine & Reinforcement Learning (ML/RL) --> Many common methods are available in open source libraries provided by cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers

Following the DES publication, DoD leadership moved forward briskly with both rendering DE into law (Section 231 of Public Law 116-92) and the publication of the Department of Defense Instruction (DODI) 5000.97. These new publications shift DE from an aspirational DoD objective to a committed, pervasive DoD objective. Per the following graphic, 5000.97 advances the DE discussion and implementation by first defining technical activities where DE is relevant and, in principle, ought to be applied. This is a comprehensive list which is intended to impact both business and engineering practices. It would be easier and shorter to make a list of that DE is NOT expected to impact!

1.       Developmental test and evaluation

2.       Engineering

3.       Hardware and software assurance

4.       Human systems integration

5.       Reliability and maintainability

6.       Manufacturing and quality

7.       Modeling and simulation

8.       Modular open systems approach

9.       Resilient systems

10.   Software development

11.   System safety

12.   System security engineering

5000.97 then helps better define terms like: Digital Model, Digital Artifact, Digital Twin, Digital Thread, and components of Digital Engineering Ecosystems. While the first set of terms are simply clarified in this document, the latter term is positioned as a significant advance of the overall DoD DE thought leadership position.

A digital engineering ecosystem includes stakeholder approaches to digital engineering. These approaches include the processes, methods, and practices necessary to conduct digital engineering. The approaches are the basis for accomplishing engineering activities and generating knowledge through digital threads and in the form of digital artifacts by extracting information from digital models. Ref 2

First-hand experience with implementing such DE approaches shows that this is not simply a new set of things to do. Rather, to be truly effective, these approaches must come with a new sense of transparency and collaboration; which has the potential to fundamentally change how every organization and practitioner thinks about our roles and how we provide value. In the past an organization might use some particular tool to facilitate their workflows. This would lock them into a relationship with a specific vendor to use the tool and it would consume data from some potentially proprietary data inputs.

DODI 5000.97 states the intended impact of DE as follows:

Digital engineering is a means of using and integrating digital models and the underlying data to support the development, test and evaluation, and sustainment of a system. The June 2018 DoD Digital Engineering Strategy describes how the application of digital engineering can modernize how the DoD designs, develops, delivers, operates, and sustains systems. Digital engineering:

a. Is a critical practice necessary to support acquisition and sustainment in an environment of increasing global challenges, complexity, dynamic threats, rapidly evolving technologies, supply instability, and increasing life expectancy of DoD systems currently in operation.

b. Expands on engineering practices to take full advantage of computation, visualization, and collaboration to enable faster, smarter, data-driven decisions throughout the system life cycle. Digital engineering should enable faster, higher-quality decision making in weapon system design, development, testing, fielding, and sustainment. These improved decision operations will enable more rapid delivery of warfighting capabilities to the field.

c. Uses computer systems for the development, verification, validation, use, curation, configuration management, and maintenance of technically accurate digital models in support of system life-cycle activities. These models capture system representations and, together with their underlying data, provide an authoritative source of truth to stakeholders.

d. Moves the primary means of communicating system information from documents to digital models and their underlying data. Ref 2 (emphasis by the local author)

In the new DEE world, it is fully expected that such ecosystems will be occupied by all the right tools/capabilities, data models, data, and vendors with exceptional data interoperability to ensure that leaders have decision-able information at the pace of need. Take a quick glance at the Digital Thread, Digital Model, and Digital Artifact lists in the graphics above. Some organizations will provide authoritative data. Others will manage this data (e.g. evolving requirements). Still others will analyze this data to help understand what ought to happen next. Some participants will be inside the government and others (especially the vendors that build and deliver the solutions) will be outside the government.

A digital engineering ecosystem includes the infrastructure and architecture necessary to support automated approaches for system development, design, testing, evaluation, production, operation, training, and sustainment throughout the defense acquisition process. The infrastructure consists of the following digital engineering ecosystem assets: 1. Hardware, 2. Software, 3. Networks (including cloud services), 4. Tools, 5. Workforce. Ref 2 (emphasis by the local author)

As an industry leader focused on performing Digital Engineering as a Service (DEaaS) to inform decision makers, I find wording like “automated approaches” in the paragraph above to be strategically astute and precisely on the mark. When data changes, then leaders ought to fairly immediately be able to see the impacts. It makes any member of the DEE potentially as smart as everyone in the DEE.

The DES was a landmark document back in 2018 when it laid out a very ambitious, aspirational set of revolutionary Systems Engineering concepts. DODI 5000.97 is clearly a worthy DoD Instruction to follow it. Both of these strategic documents are riding a long list of contemporary commercial technology trends which should both cement the staying power of DE and likely accelerate its impact as more organization get on board. With 5000.97 we can now see a clearer, committed DoD path to bringing DE agility & velocity to classical waterfall acquisition processes; delivering Better, Faster, Cheaper results for our joint and partner warfighters.

References:

1.       Digital Engineering Strategy, OUSDR&E, Jun 2018

2.       DODI 5000.97, Digital Engineering, OUSDR&E, Dec 21, 2023