Department of the Air Force and Istari Digital Unveil Industry Øne: The ARPANET for Engineering

ARLINGTON, Va., May 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of its contract with The Department of the Air Force (DAF) Digital Transformation Office, Istari Digital has announced the Industry Øne Program. Industry Øne includes heavy hitters from across the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), and represents the first time a small business has orchestrated engineering data across industry silos to break down digital engineering barriers and accelerate digital transformation.

Fifteen organizations have been contracted by the DAF to level the digital playing field. These organizations range from FFRDCs to private industry, and include:  Accenture Federal Services, Blue Origin, Boeing Defence Australia, GE Aerospace, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, MITRE, Northrop Grumman, Picogrid, Rolls-Royce, RTX, Wichita State University - National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) , the Stevens Institute of Technology Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), and Xometry.

Defense programs rely on thousands of suppliers operating often-incompatible tools behind separate firewalls. Personnel can email any type of information across their IT boundaries but cannot automate workflows securely, compliantly, and auditably while protecting intellectual property.

Industry Øne changes this. The organizations supporting the project will connect live data across the Defense Industrial Base without centralizing it.

"Integrating sensitive data without aggregating it in one system is a need spanning the Department," said Dr. Will Roper, CEO of Istari Digital and former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. "Today, experts must act as human APIs in a world moving at digital speeds. Industry Øne will demonstrate digital collaboration across toolsets, teams, and AI. Compliant by design."

The program puts a new twist on repositories - the same CI/CD foundation that underpins modern software development - by adding the security and AI-auditability needed for national security missions.

About Istari Digital Istari builds infrastructure for no-fail industries, connecting engineering data peer-to-peer in alignment with zero-trust standards, without centralizing ownership. All data stays sovereign. All access is revocable. All provenance is mathematically traceable. Learn more at istaridigital.com.

For inquiries, please contact [email protected].

SOURCE Istari Digital, Inc.