SOSA interfaces helped Army upgrade avionics during demo, official says
NewsSeptember 22, 2026
NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland. Standardized hardware interfaces enabled the U.S. Army to add and replace avionics processing cards from different suppliers during an open-systems verification demonstration, an Army architect said at the 2026 MOSA Industry and Government Summit
The demonstration examined whether an existing processing environment could accept additional computing capacity and address component obsolescence without remaining dependent on its original supplier, said Bill Jacobs, chief technical architect for U.S. Army Capability Program Executive Aviation.
The Army installed a card from a vendor that had not supplied the original processing environment, Jacobs said. It also used another vendor to perform an obsolescence upgrade and rehost the associated software.
“There were lots of issues, as you might imagine, but we were able to add a new card from a vendor who does not have the original processing environment,” Jacobs said. “We were able to take yet another vendor to do an obsolescence upgrade and rehost our software.”
The demonstration relied on hardware requirements derived from the Sensor Open Systems Architecture, or SOSA, Technical Standard, particularly standardized slot profiles. Those profiles define mechanical, electrical, cooling, and interface characteristics intended to give integrators confidence that a compliant card can be installed in a corresponding chassis slot.
That capability addresses a recurring problem for aviation programs: processing capacity eventually becomes insufficient, while processors and other electronic components become obsolete during the service life of an aircraft. Programs may also reserve an unused slot for future expansion but lack confidence that a new card will be compatible when an upgrade is finally needed, Jacobs said.
“Knowing that you can do those things” is a significant enabler, he said. Qualification and other program processes still must be completed, he added, but the standardized interfaces establish the technical basis for making the change..
Rob Scout, deputy open architecture functional lead and Avionics Architecture Team deputy integrated product team lead at NAVAIR/PMA-209, said the Navy is also using SOSA as both an engineering reference and an acquisition tool. NAVAIR can employ the standard to begin developing government-owned designs before engaging industry for production and can incorporate elements of the SOSA approach into proposal-selection criteria, he said.
The panelists cautioned that applying a modular open systems approach does not eliminate integration problems or qualification requirements. Programs must still verify that a new component operates correctly at the system level and meets the environmental and mission requirements of the aircraft.
Jacobs framed the principal benefit as confidence that a program can execute a planned change using components from more than one supplier. The government, he said, has a focused interest in using standardized processing environments to manage obsolescence and add computing capacity throughout an aircraft’s service life.
