Istari Digital and AFRL expand partnership to advance digitally-certified aircraft development

Istari Digital, a leader in decentralized digital infrastructure, and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have expanded their joint Flyer Øne initiative with an additional $9 million in new work. The expanded scope strengthens the program's digital test capabilities by integrating advanced Verification, Validation, and Uncertainty Quantification (VVUQ) methods and extending the digital thread across both physical and digital domains. The goal: to enable the world's first digitally-certified aircraft.

Over the past two years, AFRL and Istari have partnered with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to develop a decentralized test network that combines unit tests with industry-standard engineering models. These assets, connected through the Istari Digital Platform, feed into automated pipelines that initiate performance verifications against requirements in real time.

The team's primary focus has been digitizing the Airworthiness certification process. Working with an X-56A digital twin, they've developed automated flight validation tools and defined digital continuation points — outlining a virtual flight envelope before a real one ever begins.

This new contract expands the effort to include more sophisticated evaluation of flight and ground test data, improving how digital models are measured against physical flight results and boosting confidence in modeling and simulation as a foundation for certification.

Quote from Will Roper, CEO of Istari Digital: "Flyer Øne isn't about ending the physical — it's about unlocking the full power of digital. Earlier insight into certification means better designs, faster. Physical testing lives on in ever-smarter lifecycle models — proving grounds for future AI."