Figure 2. AN M113 and Its Digital Twin
able. A new effort is required, simi - lar to STEP, to create interoperable metadata. Another move toward interoper - ability was the November 2023 for - mation by the Air Force, Army, and defense industry groups of a Digital Materiel Management/ Industry As - sociation Consortium. The under - lying belief is that technology has been transitioning to digital for de - cades while business practices have remained unchanged. Ultimately, the goal is for models to replace doc - uments, structured data to replace disparate information, and digital collaboration to break down decision stovepipes. Tenet 3. Establish and monitor pathfinder programs. Specific pro - grams were named Pathfinders, Army programs with ongoing DE activities. Pathfinder programs were identi - fied from different stages of the life cycle and different commodity areas to highlight effective processes ver - sus less effective ones. Those can be used to share lessons learned and to build momentum across the Army for adoption of DE. Existing policies that require re - visions to foster DE have been iden - tified. Six pathfinders were named
Source: National Institute for Aviation Research, Wichita State University.
(Table 1) from four different life-cycle stages. Army program managers were asked to develop DE plans and de - signs for two of the Pathfinders from the start—the XM-30 Mechanized In - fantry Combat Vehicle and the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft. These two programs in the early stage of acquisition are said to be “born digital”; essentially, everything is model-based. They are already yielding results; the XM-30 models were instrumental in answering 30 to 40 percent of the Preliminary Design Review questions, and Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft models helped reveal er - rors prior to review.
One DE tool involves creation of “digital twins” that help show capa - bilities while identifying future prob - lem areas. The Government Account - ability Office defines digital twins as virtual representations of physical models that incorporate dynamic data in that the model changes and updates in real time as new informa - tion becomes available. The Army has worked with Wich - ita State University National Institute for Aviation Research to create digital twins of the M113 armored personnel carrier (Figure 2) and the Black Hawk and Apache helicopters shown in the photograph on this page. The digi - tal twin approach enables the Army
A UH-60L fuselage and operational helicopter are transported from Corpus Christi Army Depot to Wichita State University where researchers at the National Institute of Aviation Research (NIAR) will create a virtual model of the workhorse of Army aviation. Source: U.S. Army photo by Ervey Martinez
JANUARY – FEBRUARY 2026 | DEFENSE ACQUISITION MAGAZINE 49
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