Lockheed Martin rolls out digital twin tech for flight trainers

Lockheed Martin’s Orlando operations rolled out digital twin technology last week that will help track and diagnose anomalies in flight trainers before they are produced.

The technology will help the company cut the time needed to build high-fidelity flight simulators for its clients.

What once took years can now be done within months. from years to just two to three months.

The ARISE simulation environment has made its debut for the company at its Missiles and Fire Control site in Orlando, with the plan to ultimately implement it across the entire company by January of 2025.

The system was a nationwide development program, primarily staffed in Dallas and Orlando.

“We collaboratively optimize the way our systems work in a joint all-domain operations environment, and that’s going to provide an enhanced benefit to the warfighter as they meet new and evolving threats,” said Doug Juul, Director of ARISE Simulation & Data Analytics Products, in a press release.

That means simulators headed for Lockheed Martin’s clients can identify, diagnose and potentially repair issues they might have much quicker, potentially cutting delivery time and customer satisfaction. 

The suite of tools will include data analytics, mission software, hardware and modelng, and simulation.

The digital twin technology and software allow testing on the actual environment a product will be set in.

“Data analytics is saving thousands of hours of analysis time by using Machine Learning on Petabytes of data that would otherwise would have relied on human eyes to sift through the data,” a Lockheed Martin official who is an architect of ARISE Data Analytics said.

The program includes a storage database that also analyzes real flight test data.