DIGITAL TEST AND EVALUATION FOR NAVAL SYSTEMS

Digital engineering is revolutionizing the field of systems engineering. The United States Navy is implementing digital engineering concepts and methods, including digital twins, digital threads, authoritative sources of truth, model-based systems engineering, and digital tools and technologies to design and build complex naval systems. This thesis explores the use of digital engineering for naval system test and evaluation (T&E). It provides an insightful examination of the current state of naval acquisition T&E, explaining associated challenges and limitations that underscore the need for a modern approach. It offers a comprehensive overview of digital engineering, illustrating its impact through several use cases within the Navy and across industry. It proposes a new concept: "digital T&E" as the application of digital engineering methods to the test and evaluation phase of systems engineering. This research reveals how digital T&E can be used to address and overcome present naval T&E challenges. It concludes with a proposed roadmap for implementing a digital T&E approach for the Navy. These insights aim to have practical implications for the naval T&E community, guiding the development of new strategies and policies that harness digital engineering to achieve improved performance and contribute to modernizing the traditional T&E process.
Civilian, Department of the Navy
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