3 Ways to Modernize Defense Systems That Ensure Mission Success

Sustaining military capability increasingly depends on how quickly and efficiently program offices can be upgraded in response to new threats, new tactics, and new technologies. In practice, these threats and technologies now move faster than the legacy acquisition system can handle. Processes intended to manage risk often become obstacles that slow the improvements needed for systems to adapt.

The fast-emerging discipline of digital engineering, or DE, is beginning to bridge the gap. Instead of relying primarily on static documentation and traditional CAD drawings, program offices and industry partners can work from shared, continuously updated digital models—often referred to as digital twins—that reflect how systems are designed, built, operated, and evolve in the real world.

This shift changes how modernization actually happens. Teams can surface technical and integration risks earlier, test design alternatives more frequently and at lower cost, and maintain a single, coherent engineering environment as systems move from design through production to sustainment.

More accessible testing and continuous modeling make it easier to upgrade fielded systems, reduce delivery risk, and adapt to changing operational and cyber threats. In practical terms, digital engineering supports cyber-resilient designs, helps programs cross the gap between development and deployment, and reinforces modular, open architectures that can evolve over time.

For program teams, digital engineering is less about new tools and more about creating a trusted trail from design to deployment.

Here are three ways that taking innovative approaches enabled by digital engineering and testing can improve digital systems and future-proof military equipment and materiel.

1. Create Living Cyber Testbeds for Defense Systems

Traditional document-based engineering methods have proven effective over the years, but they often produce defense systems that remain cyber-secure only at introduction. They are actually based on static assumptions about the threat environment and on the current state of technology.

In today’s wide-open digital landscape, threats evolve almost constantly. It’s next to impossible in an analog world to field-test and capture every new development to keep pace with crafty enemies and continually evolving capabilities.

Digital engineering changes the equation by turning the modernization challenge into a more dynamic risk-management exercise. Think of digital engineering and its components—digital twins, model-based engineering, the digital thread, etc.—as a permanent laboratory for identifying and testing new software and hardware. As the RAND Corporation frames it, “DE can be seen as automated support to the systems engineering process.”

One of the main new advantages of digital engineering emerges from the cyber realm. Under Department of War imperatives and implementation guidelines, it enables program officers to devote more time to identifying, testing, and implementing cyber-resilient designs. It does so by moving activities, such as “Red Team” attacks, to the left in production schedules, creating more time and resources for “what-if” scenarios and contingency planning.

Cyber-resilience differs from cybersecurity in its assumptions about adversary progress. Resiliency involves tactics, techniques, and procedures that keep systems operating once the perimeter has been breached. Cybersecurity looks to keep enemies at bay.

That capability was on display in the development of the B-21 Raider, the new US Air Force bomber by Northrop Grumman and other partners. Digital engineering delivered significant risk reduction through NG’s “Model-Based Everything” approach. This helped prevent problems from becoming issues by simulating high-end threat environments in the cloud. “The B-21 is being designed . . . to survive against the most advanced modern air defense systems such as Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile system and China’s J-20 stealth fighter, which entered service in 2017,” Breaking Defense reported in 2021.

The Navy also used DE in connection with the Aegis combat system. In development, cybersecurity issues became a primary focus. Throughout production, digital twins enabled developers to “quickly test software changes and get them deployed to the fleet,” Vice Admiral Bill Balinia, former head of NAVSEA, told USNI News. Digital twins “create a comprehensive digital environment that can support the entire process of Navy concept design, industry detail design, and then follow-on sustainment throughout the life of the ship class.”

2. Carry Innovation Across the “Valley of Death” With Digital Threads

The challenge in producing defense systems isn’t just in building them; it’s surviving the transition from prototype to program of record. Acquisition professionals know this gap as the “Valley of Death,” where new technology faces substantial obstacles to reach the warfighter in theater. Failures tend to accumulate at handoffs, when systems move from one phase of the development cycle to the next.

Digital engineering offers a new approach: a next-generation version of industrial productivity, enabled by the digital thread. With this, decision-makers across the lifecycle can view a common operational picture that consolidates technical data and system knowledge, aiming to replace fragile handoffs with continuity.

Here’s one example: the legacy global supply chain, which traditionally requires engaging with disparate organizations to obtain the components and services needed for the system. The integrated nature of the digital thread provides an up-to-date view of the supply chain’s status, streamlines production, and consolidates consideration of standards and compliance regulations. The digital thread connects the supply chain to design and manufacturing, so changes in one area are reflected everywhere, instantly—from bolt to circuit.

The information pulled from digital threads provides “the underlying data to support development, test, and evaluation, and sustainment of a system,” the Department of War indicates in digital engineering policy documents. Digital engineering also enables program offices “to take full advantage of computation, visualization, and collaboration to enable faster, smarter, data-driven decisions throughout the system life cycle.”

One of digital engineering’s principal tools is the digital twin, which provides a “single source of truth” and enables contractors and government partners to move from static PDF artifacts to a virtual model, ensuring that design intent is no longer lost between organizations or phases.

Northrop Grumman has steadily expanded the use of the digital thread across its production of the B-21 bomber and the Sentinel ICBM programs. “The harmonization of data and processes from disparate systems . . . is revolutionary, resulting in efficiencies that can and will accelerate the traditional program lifecycle,” Jeremy Knupp of Northrop said in a 2024 interview with Breaking Defense. “For example, as model fidelity and confidence increase, prototypes won’t be necessary. Thus, the first airplane to exit our facility is a production-representative test aircraft, not a prototype.”

3. Reduce Vendor Lock-In With Modular, Enforceable Architectures

To maintain superiority and adapt to evolving threats, defense leaders must build a flexible and agile development process. Digital engineering provides the platform for modularity, which DefenseOne describes as a “powerful, underused approach to acquisition.”

Modularity is both an offensive and defensive capability. On offense, deployed forces need to swap sensors, software, and weapons as conditions on the ground change. They also need to analyze and make quick decisions.

Defensively, maintaining a “modular open systems architecture” enables forces to develop cyber-resilient systems that can isolate cyber threats. The policy framework for the Department of War already exists: the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA). What has been missing is the means to implement it in real terms. That capability emerges from digital engineering. MOSA gives the government overarching control of the technical baseline. For example, the use of digital twins enables programs to verify, before purchase, that a third-party software patch or component will keep the system stable.

In many ways, MOSA has always been part of the Department of War’s DNA, at least according to the US Army. It’s just that today, the complexity of components and subsystems in tanks is vastly different from what it was for a Revolutionary War musket.

The US Department of War Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Office (OUSW(R&E)) says that the MOSA approach “depends on active involvement by multiple stakeholders” and is best understood as an ecosystem that brings together governance, industry, contracting, systems engineering, program management, policy and guidance, and education and training.

Modularity makes it easier to update code, build purpose-built cybersecurity, and develop cyber-resilience without performing entire-system overhauls. It also makes modernization routine and affordable, rather than onerous and expensive, as can be the case with proprietary architectures.

As the OUSW(R&E) describes it, MOSA implementation can take several forms. The department “can use MOSA to design systems with highly cohesive, loosely coupled, and severable modules that can be completed separately and acquired from independent vendors.”

Improved Results and Effectiveness in Defense Systems With Sumaria

These capabilities share a simple unifying premise: The systems that will matter most in the next decade are those that can keep learning, adapting, and improving in the field without navigating a traditionally onerous acquisition process.

Digital engineering makes that possible by giving leaders flexibility and agility across the defense systems lifecycle. With four decades of systems engineering experience, Sumaria Systems helps defense organizations put that capability to work with deep mission experience, advanced digital engineering, data, and systems expertise.

Partnering with Sumaria provides a strategic advantage through cutting-edge unmanned systems engineering and digital solutions tailored to defense programs. Our expertise helps you reduce development time, lower costs, and improve system reliability, ensuring that your programs meet critical deadlines and security standards. We are dedicated to supporting your mission objectives with innovative technology, experienced personnel, and a focus on long-term sustainment and upgradability. Let us help you achieve operational superiority and strengthen national security through advanced engineering support. If you'd like to speak with one of our specialists, feel free to book a one-on-one call.