Mission Engineering Is Becoming the Bottleneck. DoW’s New Mission Engineering Automation Testbed Aims to Fix That

As the Department of War (DoW) confronts growing complexity across joint, multi-domain operations, mission engineering has emerged as a critical (but increasingly strained) discipline for aligning systems engineering with operational outcomes. To address this challenge, the DoW has awarded a prototype Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) to Istari Federal LLC to establish the Mission Engineering Automation Testbed (MEAT), a new effort designed to modernize how mission-level insights are generated, tested, and applied across the joint force.

The award, executed via Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division’s Strategic & Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems (S²MARTS) OTA, provides the flexibility required to rapidly prototype and integrate mission engineering capabilities across Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) environments, an area where traditional acquisition pathways have struggled to keep pace with evolving operational needs.

Sponsored by a coalition that includes the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (OUSW(R&E)), Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), Navy Modeling and Simulation Office (NMSO), Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS-C), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR), MEAT is intended to accelerate the adoption of mission engineering by automating and integrating workflows used across research, development, test, evaluation, acquisition, and operational planning.

“Mission engineering is essential to understanding how systems perform together in real operational contexts, but today it remains too manual, fragmented, and slow to keep pace with evolving threats,” said Tony Kestranek, VP of S²MARTS, NSTXL.“MEAT is designed to change that by providing an automated, interoperable ecosystem that enables faster, mission-level insight—before decisions are locked in.”

The MEAT effort seeks to move mission engineering beyond isolated tools and low Technology Readiness Level (TRL) initiatives by establishing a secure, scalable testbed, capable of supporting joint and enterprise-wide use. Phase One of the award focuses on developing prototypes that integrate advanced modeling, simulation, and analytics into LVC environments, enabling seamless tool interoperability while supporting multi-level security and cross-domain data exchange.

Unlike traditional, system-centric development efforts, MEAT is structured as a reusable, open-architecture platform rather than a one-off prototype. This approach allows new tools and capabilities to be integrated rapidly and non-intrusively, supporting continuous modernization as mission needs evolve across the joint force.

Through MEAT, and enhanced by the flexibility of S²MARTS, the DoW is signaling a broader shift toward mission engineering as a foundational element of digital engineering and multi-domain operations, ensuring that mission analysis does not become the rate-limiting step in delivering capability to the warfighter.

The OTA has an anticipated project value of up to $50 million, inclusive of potential follow-on phases for expanded integration and logistical support.

About S²MARTS

The Strategic & Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems (S²MARTS), managed by NSTXL, is the premier rapid OT agreement vehicle for the Department of War (DoW) in trusted microelectronics, strategic & spectrum mission, and other critical mission areas. The Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Crane Division created S²MARTS to grow and engage an elite network of innovators, shorten the path to defense prototype development, and advance national security efforts.