By Mike Macpherson
An industry perspective from Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions

The U.S. Army’s recent request for proposal (RFP) from industry for its new Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV), the planned replacement for the venerable Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, represents a true milestone for the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) industry. What makes this ground vehicle a real turning point is the extent to which its design will embrace open standards, as was made very clear during the virtual Industry Day event for OMFV organized by the Army last December.

In order to keep up with the continued acceleration of new technology and to be able to protect the warfighter from the latest threats, it is essential that we can turn our deployed platforms into adaptable entities that can evolve over time and are not static. The SOSA [Sensor Open Systems Architecture] Technical Standard is the next major step in realizing this goal.

The standards currently being defined by the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortium will deliver many clear benefits to system integrators designing embedded sensor-processing systems. The SOSA Technical Standard will define common pinouts that foster and ease interoperability. Greater system flexibility will come from the ability to place a variety of module types into the same system slot, while convergence on common interconnect technologies (such as backplane Ethernet) will ease the integration of modular systems.

In order to keep up with the continued acceleration of new technology and to be able to protect the warfighter from the latest threats, it is essential that we can turn our deployed platforms into adaptable entities that can evolve over time and are not static. The SOSA [Sensor Open Systems Architecture] Technical Standard is the next major step in realizing this goal.