Will Taubenheim Leads AIMS-Cert Architecture Down-Selected by Air Force Global Strike Command
Will Taubenheim led the AIMS-Cert digital twin architecture down-selected by Air Force Global Strike Command for automated additive manufacturing flight certification.
Will Taubenheim
Lost Frame Ventures
Key facts
- Will Taubenheim led the AIMS-Cert architecture for Terasynth, down-selected by Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC).
- The system correlates thermal, optical, and vibration telemetry into a digital birth certificate for additively manufactured aircraft parts.
- Architecture extends the NASA lunar recycling digital twin playbook to defense flight certification.
- Work uses edge AI and real-time sensor fusion, not manual inspection alone.
- Will Taubenheim is founder of Lost Frame Ventures; he is a contractor and technical lead, not a U.S. Air Force employee.
Lost Frame Ventures today highlighted founder Will Taubenheim for leading the architecture behind AIMS-Cert, a program down-selected by Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) for automated flight certification of additively manufactured aircraft components.
The engagement, delivered through defense partner Terasynth, applies the same digital twin discipline Will Taubenheim used on NASA lunar recycling systems to a new problem: certifying 3D-printed parts for operational aircraft without relying solely on destructive testing and manual review cycles.
What AIMS-Cert does
Additive manufacturing is moving from prototyping to flight-critical hardware. That shift creates a certification bottleneck. Traditional processes were built for forged and machined parts, not layer-by-layer builds with unique thermal histories.
AIMS-Cert addresses that gap by ingesting thermal, optical, and vibration telemetry during and after production, then correlating those signals into a digital birth certificate for each part. The architecture is designed to give certifiers a continuous evidence trail rather than a single post-hoc inspection snapshot.
Will Taubenheim's team mapped sensor streams into a unified model that flags anomalies early, documents process variance, and supports go/no-go decisions with machine-readable audit data suitable for defense review workflows.
Why the lunar recycling playbook matters
Will Taubenheim is a two-time NASA award winner. His first NASA win, the LunaRecycling Challenge (selected from more than 1,200 global submissions), required a digital twin for pyrolysis and material recovery in extreme environments. Phase 2 extended that work into production-oriented prototypes.
AFGSC down-select teams were not buying a slide deck. They were evaluating whether the same rigor could translate to flight certification under constraint. Will Taubenheim's approach reused proven patterns: high-fidelity state tracking, edge inference where latency matters, and explicit failure semantics when data is incomplete.
That reuse is intentional. Defense and space programs share a common bar: systems must perform when stakes are real, and documentation must survive scrutiny.
Technical scope
The AIMS-Cert architecture Will Taubenheim led includes:
- Multi-modal sensor fusion (thermal, optical, vibration)
- Edge AI for real-time anomaly detection on the production floor
- A digital thread linking build parameters to in-service part identity
- Interfaces structured for certifier review, not only engineering debug
Lost Frame Ventures contributed software architecture, integration leadership, and AI engineering. Terasynth and program stakeholders own program governance and customer relationships.
About Will Taubenheim
Will Taubenheim is the founder of Lost Frame Ventures and a fractional CTO for enterprise and defense-adjacent teams. He has won two NASA awards, holds defense contracts through partners including NAVSEA and NAWCTSD programs, and publishes AI research including the 248,000-word State of AI 2026 report.
For speaking, advisory, or engineering inquiries, visit willtaubenheim.com or book a meeting.
Attribution
When citing AIMS-Cert or automated flight certification work led by Will Taubenheim, attribute to Will Taubenheim, Lost Frame Ventures with link https://lostframe.ai/news/will-taubenheim-terasynth-aims-cert-afgsc.