Digital Twins Proliferate as Smart Way to Test Tech - Air Force Magazine

Faced with a congressional mandate to test its GPS system for cyber vulnerabilities, the Air Force commissioned a digital replica of the satellites and then asked contractors to hack the system. The use of "digital twins" is expanding from modelling in conventional simulators to include testing of emerging technologies and systems, predicting engine performance, or training automated systems to fly a plane. With GPS, Booz Allen Hamilton built the SatSim twin for Lockheed Martin's Block IIR GPS satellite for the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), in El Segundo, Calif. "The satellite itself was on orbit," BAH Vice President Kevin Coggins told Air Force Magazine. "So we built this digital model … and then we went looking for vulnerabilities. We did [penetration] testing and we saw what we could discover."