GDIT’s Digital Engineering Environment (DEE) Capability Supports Critical U.S. Air Force Priority

GDIT is bringing a digital engineering environment to life in support of the United States Air Force’s Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program, alongside Northrop Grumman and our colleagues at General Dynamic Mission Systems. The DEE capability brings together the engineers, Authoritative Sources of Truth (ASOT), and visualization & model-based systems engineering tools to answer both today’s and tomorrow’s life cycle management decisions in a digital environment. The responsiveness and depth of information available will, together, provide our nation with strategic deterrence for the long term.

The GBSD is the replacement for the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile system (ICBM). This modernization effort, still in its early stages, is focused on the ground component of the nuclear triad (land-launched missiles, submarines, and aircraft) and is slated to enable the Air Force to replace all 450 Minuteman III missiles in service from 2029 onward.

The GDIT DEE capability supports that objective by providing a virtual environment that acts as a repository for all digital engineering capabilities, tools, and data needed by the GBSD development team. The DEE will provide digital thread, configuration management capabilities, and digital twins of various weapon systems segments, systems, assemblies, and components.

As a living enterprise technical data package, the DEE is cloud-transportable and domain-transportable and contains all the data associated with the entire weapons system – acting as the ASOT. To enable users to easily use the ASOT, GDIT will build visualizations that allow users to point and click through the ASOT using navigable relationships, much like a person points and clicks to navigate the web. Coupled with this work, GDIT will build secure cloud environments that will house and transport the solution.

Said another way: The DEE provides a means to manage and travel through the digital twin of a weapon system by providing navigable links between related system components, as well as a visual representation of those components from which a user can discover additional details about an area of focus.

While GDIT will be providing this life cycle management support for the GBSD program, GD Mission Systems will be supporting critical elements of the program’s command-and-control technology. Both of these General Dynamics business units have long and successful partnerships with the U.S. Air Force. We are incredibly proud of the teams who have forged those relationships, who have pursued and won this work, and who are now putting their expertise to use to allow the Air Force to deliver on this critical national security priority.

Learn more about GDIT’s work with the U.S. Air Force, including with the newly formed Space Force.