Air Force awards $8.6M AI contract
The U.S. Department of the Air Force awarded an $8.6 million contract to Istari Digital. The funding is for an initiative called Industry Øne, which is designed to accelerate digital transformation and break down digital engineering barriers across the defense sector.
The Industry Øne initiative directly tackles a long-standing obstacle in defense programs: the inability of thousands of suppliers to seamlessly collaborate. These suppliers often use incompatible digital tools behind separate firewalls, forcing them to manually copy and share data, which creates delays and security risks. Istari Digital's platform allows different organizations to connect their engineering models and data without creating centralized copies or storing sensitive information outside of its owner's control. This approach, described by Istari's CEO as creating an "Internet of Models," allows each contractor to maintain its own security and data sovereignty while enabling collaboration. The company is led by CEO Dr. Will Roper, who previously served as the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, overseeing an annual budget of $60 billion. Istari is backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and it aims to build an "engineering metaverse" where technologies can be developed and certified entirely in the digital realm. This contract builds on previous successful collaborations between Istari and the Air Force. One such project, "Flyer Øne," involves a partnership with Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works and is focused on creating the world's first digitally-certified aircraft, the X-56A X-plane. Another initiative, "Model Øne," received a $15 million contract to link models and simulations across the Air Force to address challenges of internet-based warfare. The project is part of a much larger Digital Campaign within the Air Force, an effort started in 2020 to modernize its acquisition enterprise. The goal is to empower its workforce and processes with digital tools to develop and field complex weapons systems in years instead of decades. This shift to digital engineering is a Department of Defense-wide priority. The strategy aims to formalize the use of digital models to move away from document-based approaches, creating an "authoritative source of truth" for data to speed up development and improve decision-making across a weapon system's entire lifecycle.
