U.S. Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) wants to more than halve system delivery times and to address any obstacles to that acceleration through a new Digital Acceleration Task Force (DATF).
“The U.S. takes an average of 16 years to deliver a new operational capability, whereas China takes less than seven,” Lt. Col. Ryan Pospisal, the deputy director of DATF, said in an Oct. 27 AFMC release. “Our competitors out-pace and out-deliver us. We need to accelerate our capability delivery timelines in order to maintain a competitive advantage, and an enterprise digital approach is key.”
The task force includes members from the office of Air Force Acquisition Chief Andrew Hunter, the Department of the Air Force Digital Transformation Office, AFMC centers, and weapons system program executive offices.
DATF wants “to identify and address critical, near-term challenges to implementation of DMM [Digital Materiel Management] enterprise solutions,” AFMC said.
DMM is to use digital models throughout system life cycles. The nine-year China advantage in military system development “means nine more years of production; nine more years of modernization; and nine more years of practicing tactics, techniques, and procedures for the PRC,” according to An Accelerated Future State, an August AFMC DMM document approved by Gen. Duke Richardson, the commander of AFMC. “That’s nine years of the PRC being in the game before the U.S. even takes the field. This disparity in integrated capability delivery timelines must change—or the U.S. will lose.”
An Accelerated Future State gives examples of DMM at different development stages. During the invention stage, DMM is to foster innovation “through data-driven warfighter requirements development (e.g., Architect Framework for Simulation mission analysis), warfighter use case modeling (e.g., Systems Modeling Language-based architecting), and mission engineering (e.g., wargaming simulations to inform capability planning),” the document said. Data from the models can lead to “real-world prototyping,” as was the case with Air Force Research Laboratory’s Skyborg drone program, AFMC said.
When applied to production, DMM “models, data, and infrastructure” are to spur “model-driven manufacturing and the implementation of Full Scale Determinate Assembly (FSDA) techniques,” such as on Boeing‘s [BA] T-7A Red Hawk trainer, AFMC said.
“Assemblies click together the first time, every time—radically accelerating production timelines,” according to An Accelerated Future State. “Additionally, DMM enables interchangeable parts across tails and lots, automated part delivery ingestion, and controlled dissemination flow (e.g., Spirit Aerosystems‘ Global Digital Logistics Center). Outcomes are measured in a dramatic improvement to production timelines across all supply chain tiers, with the models, data, and infrastructure capable of re-creating the as-built design at any point in the future.”
The Air Force and the Army are holding a DMM industry event on Nov. 2-3 in Arlington, Va.