ALL THINGS CYBER
provide easier access to all supporting program data,” Gilbert said. “For our stakeholders who are trying to qualify our system, that’s very helpful. And then our digital engineering efforts will expand beyond that to support sustainment. Conceptually, every single aircraft in the field could have its own digital represen- tation.”
Gilbert noted that one outcome they’ve already encountered from using the digital tools is that it forces both Bell and the U.S. government “to have a deeper understanding of the system and how onboard systems interact with each other.”
Additionally, the digital tools have enabled the team to create linkages to all of the data. Before this, Gilbert explained, “we were dealing with siloed pieces of information, so you weren’t able to make those correlations. By utilizing these tools, we’re finding things like architecture concerns that we may not have found before, just because now it’s all connected and it’s easier for us to consume and assess if the design meets our objectives.”
FOR GOOD MEASURE
A member of the FLRAA team measures a 25th Infantry Division Soldier for improvements for the FLRAA in the 3rd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment hangar on September 9, 2024. (Photo by Spc. Charles Clark, 25th Infantry Division)
“We can also use it to help ensure that from a user interface standpoint everything is correct and suitable before we go and actually build the system, [and] we’re doing all of this digitally,” she explained. “We have a lot of digital models that represent our system that have allowed us to reduce the risk before we go and bend metal on our prototypes.”
Te digital engineering strategy, Gilbert noted, is incremental. She and her team are currently focused on using digital engi- neering to design and document the system during development. As the program progresses, these efforts will expand into test- ing, eventually incorporating sensor data from the aircraft and linking it to various enterprise sustainment tools. For now, the priority remains on building a solid digital foundation before moving into test and evaluation.
“Using our digital environment to link test data together with the system design of the aircraft can help make the verification process more efficient. It can help correlate information together, where before there wasn’t a linkage between information, and
Crews also benefit from immersive virtual training, accelerat- ing readiness for unfamiliar or high-risk scenarios. Tis makes FLRAA more agile, reliable and adaptable to the demands of future battlefields.
“We have a virtual reality [VR] capability that’s here in our office and it’s updated regularly to reflect the system under design,” Gilbert said. “We have monitors set up; we have the VR head- sets. It doesn’t take a lot of infrastructure and that capability is there for us to utilize whenever we want it. Tis is truly a revolu- tionary capability that informs engineers or logisticians and any stakeholders who need to understand the system better.”
During system design, acquisition engineers may not fully grasp design specifics, such as how the hydraulic system will fit into the system, Gilbert said. “It doesn’t exist yet in physical form, but we are able to go in, put on a virtual reality headset and they can see exactly where it is in the current design. Our engineers or maintainers can look at it and say, ‘I’m never going to be able to maintain that system with the way it is now.’ We’re able to catch things like that earlier and influence a design change.”
GETTING THE MOSA FOR YOUR MONEY While digital engineering provides the tools to design, simulate and evolve systems faster, a Modular Open Systems Approach, or MOSA, ensures those systems are built in a way that allows rapid, flexible upgrades.
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