Translating the Digital Engineering Vision to Reality: A Process for Defining a Suitable Digital Engineering Scope for DoD Acquisition Programs

Digital Engineering (DE) has been a prevalent topic across the Department of Defense (DoD) since the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Engineering – now the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering [OUSD(R&E)] - re-leased the DoD Digital Engineering strategy1 in 2018. Since then, there has been a major push to incorporate DE into the DoD acquisition process and for programs to use DE, including Mod-el-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), in system development. This paper focuses on where the DoD stands today with adoption of digital acquisition, the challenges of implementing DE on major programs, and the approach used by the Army’s Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) program to define a realistic pathway to effectively implement a DE strategy from Re-quest for Proposal (RFP) to prototype acquisition.

Citation: S. Scheithauer, D. Chudy, G. Byrd, B. Juelson, D. Clark, C. Arndt, “Translating the Digital Engineering Vision to Reality: A Process for Defining a Suitable Digital Engineering Scope for DoD Acquisition Programs,” In Proceedings of the Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium (GVSETS), NDIA, Novi, MI, Aug. 15-17, 2023.