General: MOSA key to integrated fires, coalition interoperability
NewsAugust 28, 2025
NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland. The U.S. Army is restructuring its missile and space portfolio to fully embrace the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) as it builds integrated offensive and defensive fires capabilities, said Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, program executive officer for missiles and space at Redstone Arsenal, during his presentation at the MOSA Summit here Thursday.
“For a long time I was, I was always kind of a MOSA skeptic, because MOSA was that thing that we said, but nobody ever really did,” Lozano said. "It took some time, and we had to mature the concept, and we actually had to put it into practice. ... We also had to hire some really smart people out of industry and academia to help us understand."
The 2019 reorganization of PEO Missiles and Space broke up legacy “system of systems” structures in order to “componentize the project offices," which forced project managers and their staffs to work together in a collaborative PEO environment necessary to make MOSA work, he said.
Central to that mission is the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS), which Lozano described as the “core” of the Army’s integrated offensive and defensive fires architecture. The PEO is also pursuing annual integrated fires test campaigns at White Sands Missile Range to align with requirements such as the Guam Defense System, slated for delivery in fiscal year 2027.
Lozano said that MOSA not only accelerates integration of sensors and effectors but also changes how the coalition operates. “That’s how we’re moving into the future with things like IBCS," he said. "The IBCS system, in and of itself, makes your existing architecture greater. It makes the whole of that architecture greater than the sum of its individual components.”
Adopting modular, standards-based designs also ensures affordability, Lozano said. “We need to continue to modernize in an affordable manner, and we believe that having these common interfaces, these well understood, well defined interfaces -- being able to compete and adapt at the component level -- will drive cost savings and cost efficiencies in the future,” he said.
