ACCELERATING THE DELIVERY OF TECHNOLOGY TO THE WARFIGHTER USING
COLLABORATIVE IMMERSIVE XR TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENTS &amp; TOOLS
Authors: Granville Alanzo D. 
Published: November 2024

<title>ABSTRACT</title>
<p>As technology continues to improve at a rapid pace, many organizations are
attempting to define their place within this modern age and the Department of
Defense (DoD) is no exception. The DoD’s primary focus on modernization
ensures that its design, development, and sustainment of systems demonstrate
unparalleled strength that outpaces our adversaries and continue to solidify our
position quickly and efficiently as the world’s mightiest through
fundamental change.</p>
<p>Digital Engineering (DE) is the foundation of that fundamental change.
Speed-to-Warfighter, reliability, maintainability, resiliency, and performance
are all improved through DE techniques. Accelerating technical integration by
connecting once isolated data to a digital thread encompassing all domains, and
further facilitating the evolution of the traditional approach/processes into an
effective DE strategy. DE’s goal supports a reduction of inefficient
process/procedures/communications that traditionally can yield slow iteration,
inconsistent resource management, limited participation, and more while
promoting mitigating efficiencies.</p>
<p>This document explores a DE approach that allows for stakeholder/user
collaboration daily using a model centric environment connected through the
digital thread and supports the DoD’s 2018 DE strategy implementation.
It provides easy and efficient information sharing with one input informing and
directly impacting the inputs/outputs of the connected model; creating one
authoritative source of truth. Demonstrations and support can readily be
provided using existing tools and enabling the ability to complete iterations in
minutes or hours instead of weeks or months. It also supports early
collaboration, evaluations, and reviews using immersive and XR
(augmented/virtual/mixed reality) technologies utilizing both concepts of
augmented reality to virtual reality to improve overall efficiency and decision
making throughout the product lifecycle. Additionally, the utilization of XR
provides many other benefits that allow for a variety of more in-depth
applications involving human in the loop practices promoting efficiency,
consistency, validation, verification, and facilitates performance and knowledge
boost of processes, procedures, and end-user applications. Through the use of XR
immersive technologies the technological landscape is quickly shifting and
evolving in how data is consumed in many areas including industry, government,
commercial, and academics. This document demonstrates actual proofs of concept
of this evolutionary change in conjunction with DE practices to demonstrate
military adoption and processes that support collaboration, evaluation, and
opportunities for quicker project completion or stage progression with XR.</p>
<p><bold>Citation:</bold> A. D., Granville, “Accelerating the Delivery of
Technology to the Warfighter Using Collaborative Immersive XR Technology
Environments &amp; Tools,” In <italic>Proceedings of the Ground Vehicle
Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium</italic> (GVSETS), NDIA, Novi,
MI, Aug. 15-17, 2023.</p>