Insider Brief
- Istari Digital has been given $15 million in funding for the US Air Force Model One program.
- Model One is a digital twin solution to simulate warfare.
ARLINGTON, Va., June 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Istari Digital today announced it has been awarded a new $15 million AFWERX contract dubbed “Model One” — a groundbreaking program that will link models and simulations across the Air Force to address the most pressing challenges of “internetized” warfare.
“Digital transformation is rapidly accelerating industries, from medical devices to monohull racing boats,” said Dr. Will Roper, Istari Digital’s Founder, President & CEO. “But the challenges of disparate intellectual property and classified data have made it difficult for Defense to follow in their wakes. This latest contract demonstrates our commitment to breakthrough data-meshing solutions and our customers’ confidence in leveraging them. Our plug-n-play digital thread platform provides secure, real-time, digital collaboration across difficult-to-integrate data types, unlocking digital speed of all innovation.”
Istari Digital’s platform is already being used by another Air Force program – dubbed Flyer Øne in homage to the Wright Brothers – that is building the world’s first digitally-certified airplane. Though common in leading digital industries, like Formula 1, to date, no airplane has ever been digitally certified for real-world flight. But the digital needs of the U.S. military go far beyond design and certification. The rapid pace of software and data now drives faster battlefield decision-making across domains. The U.S. military seeks to simulate, then dominate, such interconnected conflicts of the future.
“Software accurately represents the physical world in myriad models and simulations,” said Former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. “Most are challenging to integrate, limiting adoption of digital twins. As we wrote recently in the WSJ, Model Øne is an exciting opportunity for Istari Digital to create a virtual military on the way towards creating the industries of the future.”
The Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) process by accelerating the small business experience through faster proposal to award timelines, changing the pool of potential applicants by expanding opportunities to small business and eliminating bureaucratic overhead by continually implementing process improvement changes in contract execution. The Air Force began offering the Open Topic SBIR/STTR program in 2018 which expanded the range of innovations the Air Force funded, and now Istari Digital will start its journey to create and provide innovative capabilities that will strengthen the national defense of the United States of America.
The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
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