Key Takeaways:

• An advanced digital engineering tool suite brings a scalable and integrated system lifecycle development environment with fully automated data exchanges along a seamless digital thread.
• Digital engineering enables agile development of warfighting capabilities, streamlining the coordination of capacities across echelons and aligning capabilities to evolving mission requirements.
• Centralizing digital engineering tools in secure, cloud-based, government-owned platforms preserves the intellectual property within deliverables but also enables ownership of the IP.

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To accelerate its transformation objectives and deliver capabilities to the tactical edge more rapidly, the U.S. Army needs to holistically embrace a full suite of enterprise capabilities offered by digital engineering (DE) and agile DevSecOps processes and tools, supported by cybersecurity and AI capabilities in a cloud environment. With the aid of industry partners like SAIC, the Army can quickly leverage this suite of advanced tools to rapidly produce and deploy innovative solutions for soldiers in the field.

Start with the why

The primary value proposition of an advanced DE tool suite lies in a scalable and integrated system lifecycle development environment based in the cloud. With “always-on” capability, this environment features fully automated data exchanges in native formats along a seamless digital thread, from requirements to architecture, design, implementation, testing, verification, validation, deployment, operation, maintenance and ultimately disposal. 

Additionally, DE enables the agile deployment and management of capabilities to the tactical edge, streamlining the coordination of capacities across echelons and automating the provisioning of capabilities as mission requirements evolve. For the Army, the potential return on investment significantly increases when DE tools not only accommodate a versatile array of products—including hardware, software, electronics, models and simulations, training devices and systems—but also cater to end-user preferences by facilitating the use of familiar tools, all while ensuring seamless data federation across platforms without imposing extra workload or complexity.

With due credit to the Army, it has begun adopting DE processes and tools in pockets leaning forward to align with DODI 5000.97 digital engineering policy. At Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Aviation and Missile Center, Software, Simulation, Systems Engineering and Integration Directorate, a version of this advanced tool suite is currently deployed at IL-5 in an AWS government cloud.

How we can further help the Army

SAIC has for decades helped transform our government customers’ computing and decision-making capabilities through modernization of systems and optimization of people. SAIC can help the Army embrace digital transformation using DE and agile DevSecOps approaches along with the application of robust AI and cybersecurity capabilities across all domains to maximize system development and deployment velocity. This is an essential first step toward a foundational organizational transformation of technology, people and processes to maximize efficiency and effectiveness into impactful mission results.

Adoption of an advanced DE tool suite enables a second important capability advancement, which is product-line engineering and model-centric design, development and sustainment processes. The Army can digitally represent systems through the entire lifecycle, including digital architecture and requirements engineering, engineering design and development, modeling and simulation, and verification and validation. An advanced DE suite also enables manufacturing from the 3D data model using model-based definition, as well as model-based product support in the sustainment phase from the system requirements and data. 

The integration of such a tool suite by skilled and experienced technology integrators like SAIC, which has earned considerable credibility for the Digital Engineering Validation Tool for more consistent and mistake-free model-based systems engineering, can give engineering organizations a model-centric lifecycle solution. Furthermore, our advanced DE tool suite streamlines the deployment and management of capabilities to the tactical edge. By leveraging a unified model-centric environment, the Army can dynamically deploy and recalibrate field operations, manage capabilities across echelons, and automate the provisioning of resources as mission parameters shift. This adaptive posture is crucial for operations in unpredictable or rapidly changing environments, ensuring that forces on the ground have immediate access to the most current mission packages and support.

The third capability is facilitation of data-driven decisions to optimize people and improve adaptability to evolving needs and requirements. Enabled by the digital thread and federated engineering and product lifecycle management tools, teams across the lifecycle can collaborate from authoritative sources of truth, while automated data exchanges enable the right people with access to get the right information for the right use and at the right time. Data can be parsed from the system model from multiple perspectives to serve different engineering teams and stakeholders. 

Integrating AI and machine learning, our DE framework accelerates development by automating artifact creation, particularly code generation, which streamlines the transition from design to deployment and empowers personnel with swift, data-driven decisions for strategic field operations. The digital thread creates traceability in the systems data and models and accelerates agile and collaborative development by connecting the requirements phase to design and development and through to production and sustainment.

Sustainable transformation

By leveraging government-owned enterprise capabilities to host digital engineering technology on robust, collaborative and secure cloud-based environments, the Army can dramatically lower costs while ensuring consistency and interoperability and maintaining unfettered access to essential tools. By centralizing DE tools in secure, cloud-based platforms, the government not only preserves the intellectual property within deliverables but also maintains ownership of the IP embedded in their CI/CD pipelines, which facilitates accelerated and autonomous future software refinements. The Army can readily find commercial technology integrators of open-architecture DE ecosystems with supporting digital thread backbones, including SAIC’s ReadyOne.

Further, by leaning into industry partners like SAIC to source and integrate DE, agile DevSecOps and other advanced enterprise capabilities, the Army can continually leverage advancements in technology and innovation like AI, virtual and augmented realities, continuous authorization to operate, human-machine interfaces, quantum computing and others for existing cloud-based environments. Doing so will empower the Army to maintain pace with technical change, embrace the true nature of digital transformation, and cultivate an empowered and upskilled work force that can adapt to new digital realities.

Learn more about how we support customers with digital engineering solutions and capabilities at SAIC's Digital Engineering page.