MOSA makes business case for small companies, DoD leader says
NewsJune 18, 2024
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. During his Day 1 keynote address at the MOSA Industry & Government Summit in National Harbor, Md., Dr. David Honey, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, said that modular open systems approach (MOSA) initiatives like the SOSA [Sensor Open Systems Architecture] Technical Standard creates opportunities for innovative small companies.
He described that during his time at a small company he found that defense prime contractors really embraced system engineering, which means they were vertically integrated. “What I found with defense primes is that if you had something they could use rather than use own engineering team,” they were ready to work with you, Honey noted.
MOSA initiatives bring the framework to foster those opportunities, creating a strong business case for leveraging small companies, he added.
Responding to a question, Honey said that software is what really drives system development today. More and more systems are software-defined today than in the past when software was just an add-on and development was all about hardware.
“Software-defined systems are much more likely to be wave of the future,” he said.
