Digital engineering: expanding the advantage

Digital transformation – the pervasive incorporation of digital technology into virtually every process and system – is arguably the greatest force of change within the naval engineering community. Digital innovation is disrupting traditional ship design paradigms and giving rise to new ways of modernising and sustaining a future integrated force structure. This paper highlights digital transformation as a core strategic initiative that is aligned with the U.S. Department of Defense Digital Engineering Strategy. Recognising the need to expand the U.S. Navy’s advantage over its competitors, this paper identifies foundational elements required to transform current engineering design and development processes. Next, a multi-factor framework is introduced to align traditional processes employed for physical system design and development with a new digital paradigm in recognition of the highly integrated nature of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). Finally, discussion will focus on efforts underway to leverage advanced computational models and highlight the digital engineering use case for Naval Power and Energy Systems (NPES).