Air Force has 'turned the corner' on MOSA implementation, official says

News

August 28, 2025

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland. After decades of incremental progress, the U.S. Air Force is now positioned to fully implement Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) standards across its weapons systems, according to Christopher Garrett, technical advisor for systems engineering at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center during his presentation at the MOSA Summit here Thursday.

“For the Air Force, I think we are over that hump. I think we are right there, done, and the future is amazingly bright,” Garrett said during his address at the MOSA Summit. “To me, like the dawn is coming up, right? This is how I feel. I can see it, and we’re just gonna work.”

Garrett traced the struggle to adopt open systems back to a 1995 Department of Defense joint task force on open architectures, noting that despite decades of policy directives—including repeated congressional mandates—progress had long been stymied by a lack of specificity, funding, and organizational alignment. “Over the last 10 years, we really haven’t done MOSA, not really. It’s been a pickup game,” he said.

That situation, he argued, has now fundamentally shifted. Garrett cited the Air Force’s creation of new organizational structures, including architecture systems engineering groups in C3BM (command, control, communications, and battle management), fighters and advanced aircraft, and ongoing efforts in the Space Force. These groups are tasked with applying model-based systems engineering and enforcing open standards across complex portfolios.

“The establishment of the integrating PEO Mission Systems Architecture and systems engineering group … to me, is the mechanism that the Air Force established,” Garrett said. “That gives me great hope that the Air Force absolutely is conceptually implementing MOSA, and then very, very specifically, developing agile architectures with very specific standards that will withstand the test of time.”

Garrett acknowledged that cultural change within the military acquisition system takes decades, but emphasized that sustained leadership focus, enterprise-level integration, and program funding now provide the endurance required to move from rhetoric to results.

“I will preach MOSA until I die, because you have to have open architectures to be agile. There’s no doubt,” he said.