Accelerating Golden Dome with a Smart Buyer Approach – Laying the Foundation

How a “Smart Buyer” Approach Can Accelerate Innovation

A “Smart Buyer” approach can enable the government to evaluate systems and subsystems early in the engineering lifecycle (before acquisition decisions are made) to determine which to fast-track and which to table.

This approach is well suited for Golden Dome, given its nature as a system of systems (SoS) – an intricate mix of sensors, interceptors, and command-and-control systems, all sourced from different vendors and developed on different timelines. The Department of Defense (DOD) will need to rapidly model, simulate, and assess how these disparate components work together under changing operational conditions.

An integrated model and simulation framework – backed by Digital Engineering (DE) and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) tools and processes – can help DOD define requirements, flow them down to lower-level specifications, and rapidly assess and validate design options in a realistic, high-fidelity digital environment. Also, this framework can support continuous adaptation as threats and mission needs evolve.

In this Smart Buyer approach, configuration-controlled models become the authoritative source of truth, replacing traditional paper documents. Changes are automatically linked and traceable across all levels – from individual components to the overarching SoS – as well as across test assets and training systems.

Smarter, Faster, More Integrated Development

Compared to conventional development approaches, leveraging a Smart Buyer approach backed by DE/MBSE drives significant cost and time savings by:

• Accelerating requirements development and the exploration of alternative solutions early in the project development lifecycle.
• Providing a single source of truth that supports multiple environments – including all-digital simulation environments and software/processor/hardware-in-the-loop environments – to ensure all systems pull from the same underlying physics and threat behavior models.
• Seamlessly incorporating legacy systems into a modern, scalable framework that connects the development environment to a common simulation framework, supporting large-scale, integrated SoS simulation and wargaming events.  

A DE/MBSE testbed for Golden Dome would allow DOD to assess and iterate myriad vendor solutions well before physical systems are built. It would also enable the integration of these vendor models with each other and with other systems to gauge how they work together and respond to fluctuating mission conditions and requirements.

By independently evaluating vendor solutions in a realistic modeling and simulation environment early in the systems engineering lifecycle, DOD can accelerate decision making and minimize costly missteps while enabling agile, incremental capability delivery to the warfighter.

To meet the scale and urgency of Golden Dome, DOD must rethink how it designs, evaluates, and procures complex defense systems. A Smart Buyer approach – grounded in digital engineering and model-based principles – is a powerful enabler to move faster, reduce risk, avoid unnecessary expense, and make smarter acquisition decisions. But tools and processes are just the beginning. Real success will depend on the frameworks, policies, and partnerships that shape how this approach is implemented.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we explore what it will take to make this Smart Buyer approach succeed – and how Astrion’s leadership in modeling and simulation is already laying the groundwork.