Warfighter mission scenarios have evolved, and show a greater need to cover more diverse sets of targets from a single platform, and require a number of different sensor packages. Increases in computing speed and global connectivity have expanded the rate of technological advances. This has evened the global playing field, and many have taken advantage of the situation, shrinking the significant advantage that the United States once held over its peers. Traditional acquisition processes and stove-piped proprietary weapon and sensor systems no longer suffice. Unique integrations, vendor-lock-in, and data rights issues have been shown to stifle competition, limit innovation, eliminate missionized capabilities, and drive life-cycle program costs. To maintain dominance in this environment, the DoD must create agile systems that are flexible, modular, rapidly reconfigurable, and adaptable to shifting priorities. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is responding by developing technologies for Agile Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), or simply AgileISR. The AgileISR mission is to support rapid and affordable integration of emerging capabilities, delivering advanced sensing and communications capabilities to legacy aircraft and enables higher mission readiness and adaptability to the future needs of the Air Force. A key component of AgileISR is the Open Adaptable Architecture (OA2), which enables rapid integration of sensor systems built on open architecture standards and a Government-owned physical pod interface for developing and acquiring missionized solutions.
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