For decades the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), has been trying to harness the power and rewards of Open Architectures (OA) to achieve flexible weapon systems with low costs of integration and rapid upgrade capabilities. OAs provide a method for rapidly applying cybersecurity to systems as part of standardization updates. Recently, the DoD has directly endorsed OAs as a game-changer for weapon system development and identified clear OA leaders. This sets the stage for a future generation of weapon systems that support rapid integration, modification, and upgrades to enable warfighter capabilities in the field. This paper presents the difference between open architecture and open systems, a short history of OAs in the DoD, discusses how the DoD has renewed its support of OA, and ideas to maintain the momentum.
As open architecture (OA) standards become increasingly important to the Department of Defense (DoD) and in particular, the United States Air Force (USAF), so too does the need to be able to exercise, experiment, and validate interoperability with these standards. The Air Force Research Laboratory’s Sensor Directorate (AFRL/RYWA) has built an architecture and integration event called the Integrated Demonstration and Experimentation Architecture (IDEA) event. IDEA provides a realistic, adaptable government-owned reference architecture with capabilities to measure, control, and document performance benefits (or costs) for potential adopting programs; impacts of technology insertions; and insights into future OA standard growth. The IDEA event included industry and government organizations, that came together to demonstrate advanced integration capabilities in a rapid development environment using OAs, such as Open Mission Systems. The reference architecture includes multiple mission package subsystems and specialized tools for integration. The use of IDEA events to promote the evolution and integration of OA standards to meet current and future program needs will continue. This paper discusses the reference architecture used, the layout of the mission scenario for testing, and how the event was composed.
The Mission Systems Open Architecture Science and Technology (MOAST) program is an AFRL effort that is
developing and demonstrating Open System Architecture (OSA) component prototypes, along with methods and tools,
to strategically evolve current OSA standards and technical approaches, promote affordable capability evolution,
reduce integration risk, and address emerging challenges [1]. Within the context of open architectures, the program
is conducting advanced research and concept development in the following areas: (1) Evolution of standards; (2)
Cyber-Resiliency; (3) Emerging Concepts and Technologies; (4) Risk Reduction Studies and Experimentation; and
(5) Advanced Technology Demonstrations. Current research includes the development of methods, tools, and
techniques to characterize the performance of OMS data interconnection methods for representative mission system
applications. Of particular interest are the OMS Critical Abstraction Layer (CAL), the Avionics Service Bus (ASB),
and the Bulk Data Transfer interconnects, as well as to develop and demonstrate cybersecurity countermeasures
techniques to detect and mitigate cyberattacks against open architecture based mission systems and ensure continued
mission operations. Focus is on cybersecurity techniques that augment traditional cybersecurity controls and those
currently defined within the Open Mission System and UCI standards. AFRL is also developing code generation tools
and simulation tools to support evaluation and experimentation of OSA-compliant implementations.
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