As the design cycle for the Air Force (AF) moves to Digital Engineering acquisition strategies, the ability to evaluate survivability in hostile environments from the first design is critical. Current aircraft acquisition programs have a limited ability to assess operational structural survivability early in the design. Structural survivability is currently assessed by relying on live fire tests programs, and high fidelity simulations after physical prototypes are created. Skyward is able to address these limitations in the Digital Engineering environment with the Rapid Structural Vulnerability Toolkit (RSVT). RSVT provides the capability to simulate a variety of threat and target combinations at a rate of 1000's of shotlines per hour. Skyward is proposing to use this Phase II effort to enhance RSVT by expanding, augmenting and automating its abilities resulting in a tool that can be used to assess structural vulnerability against operational requirements at any stage of the design process of an aircraft. This will ensure that U.S. Air Force aircraft are as safe and survivable as possible.
