For decades, aerospace and defense programs followed a familiar pattern: define requirements, finalize designs, then validate at the end of the process. That model assumed time was available to manage surprises.
Today, that assumption no longer holds. Teague offers demonstrators—physical or digital representations of a system—which are used to test designs and decisions earlier and throughout a production process.
Across government and industry, the most common failure modes are well understood: late discovery, late rework, and loss of customer confidence. Programs miss schedules not because teams fail to ask hard questions, but because teams answer them too late—after cost, schedule, and technical commitments are already locked in.
“Late discovery is almost always the most expensive way to learn,” said Mike Mahoney, senior director of space and defense programs at Teague. “By the time an issue shows up downstream, teams are forced to manage it instead of designing it out.”
Demonstrators exist to change that equation.
Early Demonstration Is Now a Government Expectation
Demonstrators have moved from “nice to have” to operational necessity. Government customers are no longer satisfied with paper studies or promises of future performance. They expect early, visible progress that shows a team understands how a system will be built, operated, and sustained.
That shift is now reinforced by policy. At the DoD level, broader acquisition reforms call for replacing prolonged analysis with earlier demonstration and competitive prototyping as a way to move faster without sacrificing rigor.
The U.S. Army has made rapid prototyping and experimentation central to delivering new capability, explicitly emphasizing early fielding, soldier feedback, and iterative improvement to reduce risk and accelerate timelines.
“The services are saying this very clearly now,” said Tim Heiser, director of defense programs at Teague. “They want to see progress early—not just PowerPoint, but something tangible that shows you understand the problem and the operational context.”
The implication for industry is straightforward: demonstrating early decreases cost, schedule, and technical risk—and lowers the likelihood of late-stage surprises that erode customer confidence.
The Advantage of Human-Centered Design
Teague is a design firm that works in complex, regulated environments where failure is not an option. Across aerospace, defense, and advanced manufacturing, the firm partners with organizations such as Anduril, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman to help teams reduce program risk through human-centered design and early validation.
Rather than treating demonstrators as marketing artifacts or late-stage validation tools, Teague uses them as working assets—environments where engineers, operators, maintainers, and decision-makers can interact with a system while change is still affordable.
“Human error is often framed as a training or discipline issue,” Mahoney said. “But in many cases, it’s an interface problem that wasn’t discovered early enough—when the design could still be adjusted.”
Reducing Cost, Schedule, and Technical Risk Earlier
The value of a demonstrator is not realism for its own sake. It is learning—pulled forward in time.
Low-fidelity mockups can reveal fundamental issues in layout, reach, and workflow. Mid-fidelity demonstrators help teams evaluate tradeoffs between automation, information density, and operator workload. High-fidelity environments allow programs to validate procedures, training concepts, and sustainment assumptions before certification paths harden.
This directly aligns with DoD reforms and guidance for managing risk. Demonstrators help teams:
- Reduce cost risk by avoiding downstream rework;
- Reduce schedule risk by resolving uncertainty before commitments;
- Reduce technical risk by uncovering human-system integration issues early.
“If you wait until a system is fielded to understand how people actually use it, you’ve waited too long,” Heiser said. “At that point, even small changes become expensive, slow, and politically difficult.”
Demonstrators Across Space, Defense, and Sales Contexts
In commercial space programs, full-scale habitat and operations mockups are used to validate crew workflows, maintenance access, and long-duration habitability before designs are committed on-orbit. Those mockup environments evolve alongside their programs, providing continuity as configurations change.
In defense contexts, demonstrators are used to evaluate operator interfaces, autonomy supervision concepts, and mission workflows—all areas where late discovery can undermine trust with government customers.
Additionally, demonstrators are important as high-fidelity sales and trade show models. While these are not validation tools, they serve as tangible proxies. When real hardware is scarce, classified, or not yet available, a well-executed model signals seriousness and maturity.
Speed Without Losing Control
Modern acquisition reform is not about moving fast at any cost. It is about moving fast with confidence.
Demonstrators allow teams to shift risk earlier, to align stakeholders sooner, and to make informed decisions while flexibility still exists. They replace late-stage correction with early convergence.
“Speed only works when learning keeps pace with execution,” Mahoney said. “Demonstrators are how teams do that—by turning uncertainty into something they can see, test, and resolve early.”
In today’s environment, smart speed is crucial. Early learning is the difference between programs that deliver—and those that don’t.
If speed is becoming a defining pressure on your program, join us for our upcoming webinar, The New Pace of Space & Defense, on March 18 at 1pm EST. You’ll hear how early validation is helping space and defense teams move faster—with greater confidence and less rework. Register here.
Viasat’s HaloNet: Building the Bridge to a More Connected Orbit
In today’s rapidly proliferating orbital environment, spacecraft are only as capable as their ability to stay connected. Traditional communications architectures—built around scheduled ground passes and line-of-sight links—can’t keep pace with the speed and complexity of modern missions.Viasat’s HaloNet hybrid terminal aims to change that by unifying multiple communications pathways into one adaptive system, designed to keep satellites in constant contact—from launch, through orbit.
Viasat’s HaloNet: Eliminating Launch Telemetry Blackouts
For decades, space launch providers have faced the same persistent challenge: intermittent loss of telemetry data when rockets travel out of range of ground stations. These “blackouts” can last for minutes—leaving long and critical periods when vehicle health, performance, and safety information go dark. Viasat’s HaloNet Launch Telemetry Data Relay Service (DRS)aims to change that, by providing continuous, global coverage from ascent through early orbit.
Space Missions Are Getting More Complex – Ops Software Must Keep Up
As space missions evolve beyond single-satellite deployments to multi-vehicle constellations, in-space servicing, and lunar exploration, the operational burden placed on engineering teams has grown exponentially. With that shift comes a new imperative: Mission operations software must be as advanced and agile as the hardware it supports.
Common Sense: Avoiding Single-Source Dependency in Government Contracts
Today, as the U.S. Department of War increasingly relies on critical space assets—from satellite communications to reconnaissance platforms—officials should heed Paine’s timeless advice: apply common sense. Entrusting national security capabilities to a single commercial provider contradicts that wisdom, creating vulnerabilities where strategic stability depends on private agendas or individual personalities. Avoiding single-source dependency is not just a strategic choice—it’s a national security imperative.
Jared Isaacman is just over 60 days into his tenure as NASA administrator, and he’s already getting rave reviews from one space leader on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Mike Haridopolos (R-FL), who chairs the House space subcommittee, commended the entrepreneur-turned-astronaut-turned-NASA-chief for sharing the space agency’s mission with the public—and energizing a NASA workforce in which morale dipped during a rough 2025 marked by staff reductions and proposed cuts by the Trump administration.
“Jared Isaacman understands the whole world—not just political and government, he understands industry as well,” Haridopolos told Payload. “I see the energy from NASA, and the excitement in the building, when you have a charismatic leader who wants to make sure America is at the cutting edge to beat China.”
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