Open standards integration the main focus for top SOSA, CMOSS, FACE, HOST officials: panel
NewsJune 18, 2024
NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland. A panel of top defense acquisition experts spoke on a panel at the MOSA Industry & Government Summit about the future of modular open system approache (MOSA) strategies and initiatives and the need for integration of various open standards critical to military interoperability.
The panel, titled "You Had Me at Title 10 (MOSA) – Leading Open Standards (FACE, HOST, CMOSS, SOSA) Charge Forward," highlighted the efforts to unify standards such as the Hardware Open Systems Technologies (HOST), the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE), the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA), and the C4ISR/Electronic Warfare Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS).
Jon Drof from NAVAIR PMA-209 described a study conducted to clarify the differences and overlaps among SOSA, CMOSS, and HOST standards. The goal is to provide clear guidance for acquisition teams when selecting suitable standards for their projects.
"If you're on acquisition teams and trying to figure out which of the standards you might want, you can go through the study and say, 'OK, this one doesn't do this, but it does do this,'" he said.
Jason Dirner, MOSA Chief Engineer at DEVCOM C5ISR Center, highlighted the upcoming updates in the CMOSS interoperability requirements. "We are finishing up version 1.2 of the CMOSS interoperability requirements specification," he said. "It's in the final stages of approval, so we hope to have that published next month in July," he said.
Dirner also noted the major thrusts of the update include aligning CMOSS with SOSA Edition 2.0 Snapshot 2 and incorporating new references to VICTORY 110 and MORA 25, further strengthening the linkage between CMOSS and SOSA standards.
Ilya Lipkin from the Air Force Air Combat Command discussed proposed size reductions in computing hardware, noting that he has gotten requests for smaller form factors "like 5-inch cubes, and I got a request to go to 2-inch cubes or smaller."
He also stressed the importance of converging standards. "Making SOSA the premier technical standard is about the alignment of all the other standards," Lipkin said. "Our goal has always been more and more tightly aligned integration."
Looking forward, he expects that to remain the focus.
"If you develop for HOST, CMOSS, or SOSA, you should be able to be interoperable," he said. "So a lot of our efforts are at that point where we're trying to merge as many requirements as possible."
