The wings of the M437 take flight after being developed in a fully connected digital ecosystem

Northrop Grumman revealed the future of aircraft engineering with the first flight of a technology demonstrator sporting a pair of wings designed and built in a fully connected digital thread. The wings were integrated with Scaled Composites Model 437 Vanguard that took flight in late August.

This wasn’t just another first flight, though, as it demonstrated the validity of an end-to-end digital ecosystem that Northrop Grumman calls Digital Pathfinder that paves the way for faster and more affordable aircraft engineering and manufacturing.

“As we pivot toward a near-peer competitor that is increasingly enabled by technology, we must deliver high-tech, high-end solutions within tighter timelines. Digital engineering makes that possible,” said Sarah Beaudin, director, Digital Pathfinder at Northrop Grumman. “Without digital capabilities, developing systems at the cutting edge of technology would be far slower.

“Our digital environment provides near-real-time visibility, creating a single source of truth. This allows us to adopt a shift-left approach — iterating everything from design through sustainment as early as possible in the program. By the time we actually start building things, we’ve already got it right.”

The Digital Pathfinder (DPF) team, spanning Northrop Grumman and its subsidiary Scaled Composites, was tasked with developing a clean-sheet aircraft design and production of a multi-mission, low-cost attritable aircraft using a fully connected digital thread from the onset.

Northrop Grumman led the design, build, and manufacturing of the aircraft’s removable wing assemblies using advanced digital tools and processes. Scaled Composites handled aerodynamic and structural analysis, fuselage and empennage fabrication, aircraft assembly, systems integration, and the ground and flight tests.

Together, the DPF team delivered quantifiable benefits – reducing costs, accelerating timelines and improving quality. For example, engineering rework on the wings was less than 1 percent, compared to a more typical 15-20 percent for a first-time build. Additionally, the design, build, and testing of the DPF wings was accomplished with less than 2 percent of schedule erosion.

Digital ecosystem of the future

Ultimately, the platforms and systems created in the digital environment must take solid form and take flight – like the M437. Typically, that involves fabricating parts from aluminum and composite materials. Now, digital engineering enhances these processes with additive manufacturing and determinate assembly.

“Digital Pathfinder had three major manufacturing elements,” said Eric Barnes, a Northrop Grumman Fellow and additive manufacturing expert. “First, we integrated suppliers into the digital transformation collaborative toolset, enabling the ‘shift-left’ approach. This was a game-changer in many ways.

“The other two aspects were determinate assembly and additive manufacturing. To perform determinant assembly effectively, we need to push digital collaboration down to our suppliers, integrating them into our digital toolsets.”

Determinate manufacturing designs components from different manufacturers in a shared digital ecosystem. This ensures that when the parts come together on the factory floor, they do so with minimal tooling and adjustment.

In traditional manufacturing, for example, aircraft ribs and skins would arrive at the factory floor without fastener holes, requiring tooling to align the pieces before drilling. The process is both time- and cost-intensive and prone to errors, leading to scrap and rework.

In determinate manufacturing, however, the exact location for fastener holes are pre-determined in the digital design. When the components arrive on the shop floor, they align perfectly, allowing technicians to quickly install fasteners without rework.

Additive manufacturing is also revolutionized by digital engineering. Suppliers, OEMs, and customers can collaborate in real-time to create shared designs, which are then fabricated layer by layer using 3D printing technology. Northrop Grumman has invested more than $100 million in additive manufacturing, inventing new processes along the way.

“We have multiple patents associated with this continuous fiber additive manufacturing cell,” said Barnes, who led several of those innovations. “One of these patents allows machines to switch between materials, laying down continuous fiber composites in true 3D form. This enables us to align fibers with load directions, producing lighter, stronger structures with less material.”

Collaboration is king in a digital world

Manufacturing in a digital ecosystem not only enhances collaboration within an enterprise, as we’ve seen between Scaled and Northrop Grumman, but also brings together project offices, primes, subcontractors, customers,and suppliers into the heart of the production process – from research and development to sustainment.

Stakeholders can easily collaborate in a digital ecosystem because they have direct access to the same single source of truth. That provides a common view of requirements from top-level system capabilities down to component-level parts. When changes occur through the Change Control Board, which always includes customer representation — whether it’s a product improvement, evolving threats, or a design change for producibility or sustainability — those changes flow across the fully-connected digital ecosystem.

“Being connected in the digital ecosystem throughout our development lifecycle, we all can immediately see the impact of changes on top-level requirements, test requirements, and sustainment of the system,” said Beaudin.

3D digital design models, including virtual and augmented reality representations, are available for internal stakeholders, as well as customers to view. The models allow users to simulate tasks such as refueling an airplane or reloading weapons, and high-fidelity system performance simulations are also included.

“Many of these simulations are validated models of environments and threat scenarios,” said Beaudin. “The integrated DoD-industry team can assess system performance and collaborate on design trades to optimize for real-world conditions.”

When Northrop Grumman tests systems, whether through virtual models or physical hardware, the results are visible in near real-time via dashboards. Thanks to the company’s digital thread, any deviation from the customer’s requirements can be identified and addressed quickly.

Scaling across the enterprise

The Digital Pathfinder team is small, agile, and empowered to take leaps ahead in methods of testing and stressing the integrity of the digital thread. While its first tangible output was a set of wings and a new technology demonstrator, the important output was the building of a team that can now operate efficiently and effectively in the digital space and, most importantly, be exported and replicated across the enterprise to include current and future programs of all sizes.

“Digital Pathfinder enabled us to integrate and optimize our digital systems, boosting productivity and minimizing wasted time,” said Beaudin, adding that the digital readiness implementation team is now working with both capture and current programs to assess their ability to operate in a fully-connected digital ecosystem and helping them make the necessary changes to transition.

“The digital thread that is connecting our tools and the digital systems engineering process embedded in our models are scalable to large programs, and the lessons learned are going to pay huge dividends,” Beaudin said.