Department of Defense Releases New Digital Engineering Strategy

The Pentagon recently released a set of guidelines explaining how it plans to incorporate digital engineering into its oversight of the country’s defense systems. The “Digital Engineering Strategy” is broken down into five strategic goals that explicitly outline this plan through a digital engineering initiative. As technological developments continue to advance at a rapid pace and transcending all areas of society, the Department of Defense (DOD) is looking to keep pace with these changes by “transforming its engineering practices to digital engineering, incorporating technological innovations into an integrated, digital, model-based approach.”

The five strategic goals listed in the report are:

• Formalize the development, integration and use of models to inform enterprise and program decision making
• Provide an enduring, authoritative source of truth
• Incorporate technological innovation to improve the engineering practice
• Establish a supporting infrastructure and environments to perform activities, collaborate, and communicate across stakeholders
• Transform the culture and workforce to adopt and support digital engineering across the lifecycle

Michael D. Griffin, DOD Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering explained in the report that “The goals promote the use of digital representations of systems and components and the use of digital artifacts as a technical means of communication across a diverse set of stakeholders. The strategy addresses a range of disciplines involved in the acquisition and procurement of national defense systems, and it encourages innovation in the way we build, test, field, and sustain our national defense systems and how we train and shape the workforce to use these practices.”

To review the strategy in full, click here: https://www.acq.osd.mil/se/docs/2018-DES.pdf