AI Buzz Keeps Siemens Chalet Humming

FARNBOROUGH—Siemens’ chalet at the Farnborough Airshow is twice as busy as it was at last year’s Paris Air Show and three times as busy as the 2022 Farnborough event. The main driver? Interest by aerospace clients in how to tap into digital transformation and generative AI to make their operations run faster and more efficiently.

There is much to talk about. “If you look at the scope of what AI will do in aerospace on a 12-hour clock, we’re at five seconds,” says Todd Tuthill, vice president for aerospace and defense at Siemens Digital Industries Software and a veteran aerospace systems designer.

Tuthill says the surge in interest is being underpinned by new programs in defense, space and commercial aviation, such as UK-Japan-Italy Global Combat Air Program, Europe’s Future Air Combat System and the U.S. Air Force’s Next-Generation Air Dominance initiative, as well as advanced air mobility startups and space ventures. “We’re doing really incredible stuff, most of which I can’t talk about right now,” says Tuthill, who began his career in 1988 working on the McDonnell Douglas F-15 fighter.

One effort he can discuss is a contract to help Gulfstream incorporate generative AI to design electrical systems on executive jets. “They’ve told us that with our technology, they’re doing it 90% faster,” Tuthill says.

Generative AI aggregates large and often dissimilar aspects of data to create new things. And Siemens by no means has a monopoly on its use in aerospace. A visit to Accenture’s equally busy chalet yields similar excitement about the potential of technology to revolutionize aerospace and help companies compensate for the industry’s workforce shortage.

While Tuthill acknowledges it could be a long time before airplanes designed with AI are certified by regulatory authorities, he says the latest advances in AI build on research that goes back to the year the Farnborough show first admitted non-UK exhibitors. “We’ve been doing AI at Siemens since 1974,” he says. “It’s not new.”