Air Force Awards $8.6M Digital Contract
The Department of the Air Force awarded an $8.6 million contract to Istari Digital to establish an initiative called Industry Øne. The project is designed to accelerate digital transformation and break down digital engineering barriers across the Defense Department.
The Industry Øne initiative is designed to create an "Internet of Models," allowing engineers across different companies and government agencies to collaborate on designs without sharing sensitive data directly. This is intended to overcome persistent hurdles in defense acquisition, such as fragmented IT environments and incompatible software, that slow down the development of new capabilities. Istari Digital's CEO is Dr. Will Roper, the former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. The company is also backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Their stated goal is to create digital engineering ecosystems where all technologies are first built and tested in a virtual environment. This contract builds on previous initiatives with similar naming conventions. A program called "Flyer Øne" is using Istari's platform to build the world's first digitally-certified airplane, the X-56A X-plane, in partnership with Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works. Another project, "Model Øne," received a $15 million contract to link models and simulations for "internetized" warfare scenarios. The core problem Industry Øne aims to solve is that thousands of defense suppliers use different digital tools behind separate firewalls, forcing them to manually copy and share data for collaboration, which introduces security risks and delays. Istari's platform allows different engineering models to interact and be tested together in a secure, vendor-neutral environment while each organization maintains control of its own data. The Air Force has been pushing a broad "digital transformation" to accelerate how it designs, develops, and fields new weapon systems. This involves creating "digital twins" of aircraft and other systems to allow for virtual testing and faster upgrades, a process that has already been successfully implemented in industries like Formula 1 racing. This digital-first approach is seen as a critical enabler for the Air Force to maintain a competitive edge. The Department of the Air Force's Digital Transformation Office aims to move from unique, program-specific investments to enterprise-wide digital environments and tools to speed up delivery times for new technologies.
