CREATE/ERS: Department of Defense acquisition reform through resilient engineering and virtual prototyping in a digital environment:

The USA faces a multitude of threats to its national security and international interests in an era of exponential technology growth and unprecedented access by anyone with a smartphone. Traditionally, the acquisition of US defense systems has relied on sequential methods of conceptual design and development. While successful in the past, these methods are time consuming and in danger of creating vulnerability gaps that could limit or constrain US response options. The challenge is clear. Either the US Department of Defense (DoD) evolves the way it plans, develops, buys, and manufactures new weapons systems, or it cedes the high ground to a rapidly changing global environment. Adapting and expanding advances in high performance computing (HPC), developing and employing complex physics-based software tools for high fidelity modeling and simulation, and implementing a vision that combines these elements with other processes are critical enablers the DoD is pursuing. This paper describes the synergy of three...