Digital Engineering For Mission Readiness
The Department of War’s (DOW’s) progress toward digital practice in engineering, acquisition, and sustainment signifies a needed shift in standards development practices to enable further innovation, interoperability, and modernization of defense capabilities, thus supporting delivery to the warfighter at the speed of need and in multidomain environments.
StraCon’s Digital Engineering (DE) initiatives embrace DOW guidance, including the Naval Digital Systems Engineering Transformation Strategy and the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command Digital Engineering Strategy, and are critical to Naval Aviation program modernization, engineering, and sustainment through a fully integrated digital environment that is both innovative and transformative.
As the Department continues its digital transformation efforts under DOW digital engineering policy and Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Aviation’s establishment of its Digital Architecture Group, StraCon delivers the expertise needed to establish authoritative digital ecosystems that improve collaboration, strengthen configuration management (CM), and enable faster, data-driven decision-making from maintainers to the highest echelon commands.
Through a unique and innovative approach to DE, StraCon is shaping digital transformation, enabling customers to move beyond disconnected data and document-centric processes toward a secure, model-centric future that, when scaled, will provide decision advantage at all levels.
StraCon continues to deliver comprehensive, enterprise‑level DE capabilities that replace document-based, fragmented workflows with a secure, model‑centric Authoritative Source of Truth (ASoT) and an operational Digital Thread to drive acquisition, test, and sustainment decisions. Our capability combines enterprise PLM architecture, Model‑Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) integration, AI/ML‑driven data harmonization, and digitally‑enforced CM enabling program offices, engineering teams, and maintainers to trace requirements to as‑maintained configurations, perform automatic impact analyses, and demonstrate mission performance prior to physical build through the end of the product’s lifecycle. We design these environments to be government‑owned and vendor‑agnostic, enabling federated acquisition agility while preserving sustainment baselines and data rights protections essential to long‑term fleet readiness.
Operationally, our service set extends beyond tool deployment. We perform digital maturity assessments, develop DE implementation plans aligned to Systems Engineering Plans (SEPs), configure digitally enforced CM and review workflows (Systems Requirements Review [SRR], Preliminary Design Review [PDR] and Critical Design Review [CDR]), and deliver training, change management, and analytics dashboards that make model‑centric information consumable at every level. We integrate readiness analytics—ingesting maintenance, logistics, and sensor telemetry into high‑fidelity digital twins—so leaders can prioritize engineering changes and supply actions based on predictive degraders rather than reactive indicators. We also enable point‑of‑need manufacturing by linking additive manufacturing (AM) models, material specifications, and build instructions into PLM workflows to shorten sustainment timelines.
Our capabilities are critical to Naval Aviation and DOW acquisition, which demand rapid design agility and immutable sustainment baselines. Without a model‑driven ASoT and an operational Digital Thread, programs incur configuration risk, slow engineering change proposal (ECP) cycles, and manual certification burdens that degrade readiness and increase total ownership cost. By delivering a secure, auditable, and government‑owned DE ecosystem that embeds policy and standards (DoDI 5000.97, ASME Y14.x, S1000D, ISO STEP/MIL‑STD guidance), we enable programs to reduce manual reconciliation, accelerate decision cycles, and demonstrate mission assurance throughout the lifecycle—transforming technical data from a liability into a repeatable, defensible asset for acquisition and sustainment.
Moving Beyond Disconnected Data and Document-Centric Processes
Modern acquisition and sustainment generate large, disparate technical data sets across original equipment manufacturer (OEM) tools, legacy repositories, drawings, and spreadsheets. This fragmentation creates configuration risk, manual translation overhead, slow ECP processing, and difficult traceability from requirements through as‑maintained configurations.
Programs must simultaneously enable rapid acquisition agility and preserve long‑term sustainment baselines while meeting DOW digital engineering policy, intellectual property/data‑rights requirements, and cybersecurity (Risk Management Framework [RMF]/Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement [DFARS]) constraints. Installing commercial software alone does not solve these problems—programs need integrated environments that engineer policy, process, and security into the technical baseline.
Challenges Across the Digital Lifecycle
Building the Digital Foundation for Mission Assurance
We architect, implement, and sustain end‑to‑end DE ecosystems that are engineered to meet policy, security, and operational needs, not just to host data. We build government‑owned PLM/Engineering Technical Data Management (ETDM) backbones (Siemens Teamcenter, and interoperable support for PTC Windchill and Dassault 3DExperience) configured as the ASoT with digitally‑enforced CM workflows that preserve As‑Designed, As‑Built, and As‑Maintained baselines.
We integrate Systems Modeling Language (SysML), MBSE (Cameo/MagicDraw) with PLM so behavioral and functional models drive the physical architecture and enable automated impact analysis across requirements, parts, and configurations.
To solve the “Translation Tax,” we deploy AI/ML harmonization engines and an API‑first canonical data gateway (Data Fabric) that canonicalizes diverse OEM formats into a common schema, feed government platforms, and reduce manual ingestion.
Human‑in‑the‑loop governance ensures subject matter expert validation of AI recommendations. We enforce zero trust, single sign-on, role‑based access controls, and Risk Management Framework and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (RMF/DFARS) protections across Impact Level 5 and edge contexts, and we use low‑risk “defensive ghosting” migration patterns so programs maintain operations while progressively establishing authoritative baselines.
Our services include digital maturity assessments, tailored DE implementation plans, training and change management, readiness analytics dashboards, wargaming of digital architectures, action‑item management tools, and senior leader advisory support to align digital engineering with acquisition milestones and sustainment objectives.
Engineering for the Mission at Enterprise Scale
StraCon has implemented and sustains operational PLM and Digital Thread solutions across Naval Aviation program management activities and large portfolios including several North Star programs.
2015
Our PLM efforts began in 2015 with support for U.S Customs and Border Protection.
PMA-268
Siemens Teamcenter environment supporting MQ-25 and MD-5.
300+ Users
Government and industry users supported.
NAVIGATE
Enterprise PLM evolution across Naval Aviation.
PMA-265
F/A-18 and EA-18G program office support.
Our PLM efforts began in 2015 with support for U.S Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for the reconstitution of aerostats and associated ground control stations under the Persistent Ground Surveillance System (PGSS) program. We successfully reverse-engineered the system and delivered detailed bill of materials (BOM) utilizing PTC Windchill.
Our PLM efforts continued with an integration team implementing and managing a Siemens Teamcenter PLM environment for PMA‑268 (MQ‑25 Stingray and MD-5 Ground Control Station [GCS]), supporting more than 300 government and industry users and enabling engineering collaboration, flight demonstrations, and transition toward fleet readiness.
Our teams have converted manual certification and airworthiness reviews into continuous, traceable digital audits and produced readiness analytics dashboards that ingest logistics, maintenance, and supply data to identify high‑impact degraders.
Our PLM initiatives have evolved from initial fielding in PMA-268 into a robust system designated Naval Aviation Ground & Air Technical Engineering (NAVIGATE) PLM that now services PMA-268, and the F/A-18 and EA-18G Program Office (PMA-265) with several additional program offices exploring the capabilities provided by the system.
NAVIGATE was designed as an enterprise solution from a program office lens (bottom-up view). It is a commercial off the shelf solution focused on compatibility with digital-first, 3D vendor data, which preserves and presents the thorough, rich, robust features of that data and ensures data is not degraded by transformation upon import.
NAVIGATE can receive data from disparate venues (email, AMS, secure file transfer) in a broad spectrum of refinement. It is currently configured to receive full, structured, Teamcenter PLM exports from OEMs like Boeing and Lockheed Martin via an intermediary file transfer connection.
We successfully navigated the challenging cybersecurity constraints to develop and employ a Siemens Multi-Site interface to support fully integrated technical data package transfer including a direct connection to the secure Joint Technical Data Integration system.
We routinely manage data rights tagging and IP protection strategies to ensure vendor‑agnostic, government‑owned data fabrics that prevent vendor lock‑in and enable point‑of‑need manufacturing (AM integration) and as‑maintained digital twins. These program deliveries are grounded in DE policy standards (DoDI 5000.97, ASME Y14.x, S1000D, ISO STEP/MIL‑STD guidance), and measurable operational improvements reported by program offices.
We design DE environments with security and IP protection embedded from day one: zero trust architectures, single sign-on, role‑based access control (RBAC), continuous authentication, RMF/DFARS alignment, and data‑rights tagging to support Section 867 and program‑specific licensing. We apply DOW and NAVAIR digital engineering policies and relevant standards (DoDI 5000.97, ASME Y14.41, S1000D, ISO 10303 STEP, MIL‑STD‑31000B) to ensure compliant, auditable data flows and maintainable technical baselines across acquisition and sustainment.
We combine deep PLM and MBSE technical expertise with programmatic experience inside Naval Aviation program offices—deploying production systems, not proofs of concept. Our approach integrates policy into the environment, preserves government ownership of the authoritative baseline, minimizes operational disruption through defensive ghosting, and pairs digital backbones with training, analytics, and executive advisory support to deliver measurable readiness and sustainment outcomes. Our “Model is Law” ethos ensures the model drives decisions, not the other way around.
Accelerate Your Digital Transformation
Ready to modernize your engineering baseline and establish a government‑owned Authoritative Source of Truth? Contact StraCon to request a technical briefing, schedule a Digital Maturity Assessment, or download the capability one‑pager.