March 15, 2018
The FACE [Future Airborne Capability Environment] approach is a joint government-industry software standard and business strategy for acquisition of affordable software systems that promotes innovation and rapid integration of portable capabilities across global defense programs. FACE - originally avionics-focused only, but has now broadened to encompass a wide catalog of applications for use across the entire spectrum of real-time systems - does not directly address issues of quality or fitness for purpose. Because these traits are obviously important in practice, the natural question for component developers is how to meet both the explicit FACE objective of portability and any domain-specific requirements for software reliability, safety, and security. Part of the answer is to choose appropriate software-development technologies and language(s).