By Jamie Hoyt, director of engineering
With adversary arsenals harnessing new battlefield capabilities, the defense industry must be able to innovate at a much faster pace to maintain overmatch for U.S. soldiers and our allies.
The transformational speed required to deliver new combat capabilities to our troops can only be achieved through digital engineering (DE). DE tools facilitate accelerated integration of new technologies onto combat vehicles. At BAE Systems, our focus is on digitizing the capabilities that matter most first: the most critical and dynamic systems, and the processes that accelerate innovation and improve operations.
Digital engineering for impact
For nearly a quarter century, BAE Systems has used digital engineering to enhance key aspects of our combat capability development and production. This approach has evolved to a more holistic enterprise-wide approach, where we are focusing our digital expertise on the most important aspects of combat platforms. We have emphasized digitizing the most impactful and rapidly-evolving elements on our combat-proven vehicles: mission equipment such as targeting systems, counter-UAS sensors, turret systems and communications technologies on which the Soldiers rely. These technologies are essential to our Soldiers’ ability to effectively operate them and are evolving at the fastest pace. Our use of digital engineering is targeted to upgrade these types of systems at the speed Soldiers require.
We’ve also invested in our operations and digital capabilities to prioritize speedy delivery to our Soldiers. Acceleration of key capabilities is a core focus of our Virtual Proving Ground (VPG) facility in Sterling Heights, Michigan, which is focused on capability integration and a modular open systems approach. Using the power of synthetic environments, we’re able to perform digital testing and integration of new capabilities onto combat platforms. For example, the VPG is currently the development lab and simulation environment for aided-target recognition and 360-degree situational awareness projects that are vital capabilities on combat vehicles in the future. Using these synthetic environments, our engineers are able to identify and mitigate integration challenges prior to implementation on the physical platform, as well as work collaboratively with Soldiers to receive their feedback. Ultimately, this work will lead to faster capability delivery to Soldiers.
At the core of effective digital engineering is managing and manipulating large amounts of data. Fortunately, we have a substantial amount of relevant data from our fleet of vehicles that have been in service for decades. In partnership with end users, we are able to use this data and understand the intricacies of how combat vehicles need to evolve and what Soldiers need on board. Integrating mountains of real-world testing and combat operations data with our digital engineering environments means that our teams are able to use digital twins to make data-driven design enhancements and predictive modelling to upgrade specific aspects of the vehicles in alignment with customer needs. By harnessing our decades of ground vehicle data and virtual environments, BAE Systems is already working to use digital engineering to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities.
Enabling AMPV through digital engineering
The Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV) family is a prime example of a new combat vehicle that is leveraging digital engineering. The AMPV fleet was designed from the start using Model-Based System Engineering, which allowed us to streamline our development process. This included autogenerating key elements such as the contract data requirements list and software products from our model. Since then, we’ve started developing new prototypes. Using elements of digital engineering, the platform has already prototyped and fully integrated five different turrets through its common top plate.
As BAE Systems deepens its digital engineering capability, the AMPV will continue to integrate the critical capabilities that soldiers need for evolving missions, from counter-UAS technologies to battlefield situational awareness systems. The AMPV’s modular open systems architecture, combined with digital engineering tools, gives engineers the flexibility to conceptualize and design the most critical warfighting elements of the vehicle and ensure that the base platform is easily adaptable to battlefield realities.
Our Integrated Combat Solution (ICS) demonstration at AUSA is another example of how digital engineering tools can be transformational. The ICS is a powerful situational awareness system that allows Soldiers to see and control sensors on dispersed battlefield assets through a single screen inside an AMPV. Using elements of DE to integrate this type of capability is a prime example of how digital engineering can deliver impactful capabilities to Soldiers. Faster integration means Soldiers receive a battlespace management system that augments their ability to defend themselves, at a transformational pace. By using digital engineering capabilities, we can ensure that Soldiers receive the advanced technology they need, when they need it.
Data future-proofing our fleets
We are future-proofing our combat vehicle fleet by harnessing the power of our vehicle data and combining it with the strength of our digital engineering tools. In digitizing the capabilities Soldiers need most, we’re able to keep pace with emerging technologies and protect Soldiers against evolving threats.
Our end goal? Respond rapidly to the evolving threats today.