More companies relying on modeling, simulation to cut costs.

• Author: Insinna, Valerie

As the budget crunch continues, so does the Pentagon's pressure on industry to squeeze as much risk and cost out of developing and sustaining products.

Many defense companies have responded by increasing the use of modeling and simulation technologies that can help engineers refine designs and detect potential problems without having to work and rework expensive prototypes.

"The faster we can evaluate approaches and evaluate the fidelity and capability of those approaches, the faster we can iterate and improve upon them," said Paul Ferraro, vice president of advanced technology programs for Raytheon Integrated Defense. "That's where we're finding a tremendous value in our modeling and simulation work."

Executives told National Defense that they expect this trend to increase in the coming years.

"As the services' budgets are pressurized, I think they're expending a great deal of effort to do risk management and to do everything they can to assess their financial risk on any particular program," said Mike Kelly, Northrop Grumman's director of operations and strategy for its global logistics and operational support division. "The desire to do more modeling and simulation on the logistics side has gone up and up and up."

One of the biggest benefits of using modeling and simulation is the ability for companies to help customers visualize a product, get their feedback and then quickly make adjustments.

Lockheed Martin has built an entire facility in Suffolk, Virginia, expressly for the purpose of collaborating with stakeholders, said Jim McArthur, vice president of the Lockheed Martin center of innovation. The company leverages the center -- also called "the lighthouse" -- for wargames and other experiments enabled by modeling and simulation.

The lighthouse contains conference rooms, auditoriums, a classroom with 40 individual workstations and a variety of high-tech imrnersive equipment. During a media tour of the facility in July, the company exhibited its joint light tactical vehicle simulator.

The purpose of the center is to provide an environment where Lockheed can meet with is customers and test solutions for current or future issues, McArthur said.

"We help our government partners figure out how to exploit the full capability of those platforms," he said. For instance, the company has explored how to better use the F-35 in concert with the Aegis combat system on cruisers and destroyers.

"We had to develop some new technology to accommodate...