Orville and Wilbur Wright took flight on Dec. 17, 1903, for just under a minute of flight time. The aeronautical feat ushered in a deluge of innovation that dotted the skies with more and more flying machines.
Growing worldwide commercialization and exploration of space significantly benefit every industry – from academia to government and defense. Part of this new space revolution is the increasing use and advancement of small satellites, or smallsats. Smallsats typically weigh 500 kilograms or less and have less mass than traditional satellites.
To say that 2020 was a disruptive year is quite an understatement. Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs, almost 300,000 Americans lost their lives due to COVID-19, and political and racial divides grew deeper than many imagined.
An orchestra will not perform a sensational symphony if every musician does not do their part. Each group of instruments sounds well enough on their own, but it is only by contributing to the overall symphonic performance that they come into harmony.
Providing adequate training today for tomorrow’s warfighters is of critical importance. We can’t expect the modern soldier, airmen, sailor, or Marine to go into the field before mastering the mission.
A warfighter on reconnaissance peers across a valley to gather information and sees a vehicle commonly used by friendly local forces. The warfighter runs a machine learning inference process against the local video feed on a wearable “Tactical Virtual Assistant" device and receives a notification on the heads-up display of an augmented-reality (AR) headset that this vehicle belongs to friendly forces.
Point-to-point connections between information systems or third-party data managers glue together the majority of today's systems engineering ecosystems. The focus is on data movement and traceability rather than organizing data in ways to better derive meaning and knowledge from it.
More than 500 years ago, as Leonardo da Vinci experimented with his flying machines, he inked drawings and mocked up physical models before getting down to create his marvels of design. His methods set the baseline for modern engineering. Jumping forward in time, the advent of computer-aided drafting (CAD) systems in the 20th century automated the drawing process for engineers, and CAD evolved into computer-aided design by adding 3-D modeling and manufacturing planning to software capabilities.
Digital technologies have revolutionized industry, connecting us like never before and fundamentally changing how we think and work together and manage activities. In its Digital Engineering Strategy, the Department of Defense acknowledges that it’s time to change how the world’s most complex systems are acquired, engineered, operated, sustained, and retired.
You are probably hearing and reading a lot about digital engineering. At its core, it takes the acquisition, development, and sustainment of a product or system from the physical world to the virtual one. Doing this yields numerous benefits.