White Paper

WHITE PAPER SOSA and VITA Working Together for Next-Gen Defense Systems mrcy.com 4 SOSA CONSORTIUM While each service made significant progress in advancing OSA principles, they did so through different initiatives that often-shared common open standards, including OpenVPX and FACE. However, each initiative also included specific mandates tailored for service-specific platform requirements. After recognizing these facts, administrators within DoD and each of the services perceived a strong need to promote a single, common initiative to define acquisition activities across all three services. In early 2017, the DoD issued an SBIR solicitation for Sensor Open System Architecture (SOSA) Architectural Research outlining the numerous OSA initiatives and objectives for a unified solution. This resulted in the formation of the SOSA Consortium managed by The Open Group, a large organization with strict and well-defined practices, policies, and procedures for standards development efforts. A primary mandate of the SOSA Consortium is broad participation, commitment, and contribution from DoD, Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as industry, academia, and other government organizations. Major objectives include development and adoption of open systems architecture standards for C4ISR to provide a common, multi-purpose backbone for radar, EO/IR, SIGINT, EW and countermeasure systems. Additional objectives include platform affordability, rapid fielding, re-configurability, new technology insertion, extended life cycles, and re- purposing of hardware, firmware, and software. INSIDE THE SOSA CONSORTIUM The SOSA Consortium Organization consists of two primary groups. The Business Working Group (BWG) defines business and acquisition practices and creates guidance for acquisition programs. The Technical Working Group (TWG) is responsible for defining the SOSA Architecture, and producing the SOSA Technical Standard and SOSA Reference Design. The SOSA Architecture presents a modular system structure, with tight integration within modules for encapsulating functionality and behaviors, and yet well-defined interfaces. U.S. Navy Navair HOST (Hardware Open Systems Technology) U.S. Air Force OMS (Open Mission Systems) VICTORY - MORA OpenVPX - VITA 49 JBC - Platform Tier 1: Airframe Tier 2: Chassis Tier 3: Modules UCI FACE - VITA 49 OpenVPX Sub-Set SOSA CONSORTIUM Navy, Army & Air Force Industry & Universities formed under The Open Group Defining Best Standards and Practices for Open, Modular Defense Systems > > U.S. Army CCDC CMOSS (C4ISR and EW Modular Open Systems Suite of Standards) > > > > > DoD MOSA OBJECTIVES > > Figure 1 After independently developing standards in response to DoD MOSA objectives, the three services joined the SOSA Consortium to develop a unified standard.

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