Gregory T. Kiley
On December 19th, 2024, a ribbon cutting event was held for the opening of a new commercial digital engineering facility at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. While extremely significant to the Department of Defense (DoD) and to the entire DoD ecosystem, (with the exception two publications) it was mainly ignored by the mainstream defense media. Given the amount of press and pressure put on the struggling F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) acquisition program, one would have expected such a positive development to garner more recognition. Despite a bipartisan embrace of digital engineering methods and methodology on Capitol Hill and in Washington, D.C., more needs to be done and vigilance needs to be maintained in DoD oversight. Now more than ever, taxpayers deserve a 21st century DoD Smart Buyer, educated in the ways of digital engineering.
The ribbon cutting of the JSF-funded Digital Electronic Systems Engineering/Hardware Accurate Digital Twinning Emulation and Design Center is a significant step in correcting one of the major consequences of 1990’s DoD Acquisition Reform – the decimation of the DoD Smart Buyer. Our country won the Cold War because of a strong partnership between the DoD engineering centers and the robust Defense Industrial Base technical staff. The DoD engineering centers developed challenging, technically confirmed requirements, and staff members from those centers served as the “Smart Buyer” when evaluating the Defense Industrial base proposals especially when providing technical and engineering management and support to the acquisition programs. Holding these acquisition programs to military standards, these Smart Buyers helped ensure that the developed system was affordable to operate and sustain.
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