The certification of new aircraft programs is expensive. Whether it is an advanced air mobility system, a (hybrid-) electric aircraft or a military aircraft with new weapon systems, new and innovative aircraft programs are very complex. The application of new...
Digital Twins
DOT&E Director Nickolas H. Guertin said the test enterprise must be reimagined, so weapons are no longer tested in isolation.
The Air Force-managed modernization of America’s ground-based nuclear missiles has emerged as a test-bed for the use of digital twins—virtual models of real weapons systems—at every stage of the program lifecycle, its chief told the Space Symposium April 7. “What the digital environment allowed us ...
Forty years since the Air Force first started thinking about replacing the eight engines on the B-52, the job is finally underway. The re-engining is the centerpiece of an upgrade that will keep the Stratofortress operationally relevant for another 20 to 30 years. Two new F130 ...
Lessons from the KC-46 and F-35 will prove useful to the testing community in the years to come.
The nominee to take over the role of director of operational test and evaluation for the Pentagon told lawmakers Oct. 19 that lessons from the KC-46 and F-35 will prove useful to the testing community in the years to come. Guertin wrote in response to ...
The Air Force is still in the infancy of its push toward digital acquisition systems, but it won’t go back to traditional methods because the threat, the need for speed, and increasing costs demand a new way of doing business, acting Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, ...
The stand-up of the Space Force, and now its early overhaul and the creation of a new Space Systems Command, are all about resilience: Ensuring that space capabilities, which the whole country relies on, could survive a concerted attack by a near-peer adversary. As part ...
Having successfully used “digital twinning” to design and prototype its latest jet trainer aircraft, the Air Force is moving to use the new technology to develop and test weapons, too—building an online Colosseum in which vendors’ systems can virtually fight each other. Col. Garry A. ...
Air Force researchers in October will test whether a software version of the service’s developmental weapons swarm can make its way through a combat mission and reroute itself as conditions change. The demonstration is part of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Golden Horde initiative, a ...
Darth Vader, eat your heart out. A new space simulator being developed by federally funded computer engineers won’t have the planet-busting weapons the Death Star did, but it will enable users to game out the results of military confrontations in space. Operators of the new ...
Just a day after the Air Force announced that a full-rate production decision on the KC-46 tanker will have to wait until late fiscal 2024 due to extended testing of the redesigned Remote Vision System for tanking operations, the service’s acquisition executive offered his hope ...
