The U.S. Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) was an early adopter and supporter of the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Technical Standard and is at the forefront of open architecture development and leveraging modular open systems approach strategies (MOSA) in Navy avionics applications. During the MOSA Summit & Expo I sat down with Capt. Jarrod Hair, U.S. Navy, PMA-209 Program Manager, where we covered how NAVAIR leverages MOSA initiatives like FACE, the challenges with data rights, and how the defense community – government and industry – is embracing MOSA. Along those lines, at the NAVAIR booth at the expo, Capt. Hair hosted keynote speaker Hon. Nickolas Guertin, where he led an interactive discussion elaborating on current MOSA efforts in his role as Director of Operational Test and Evaluation. Guertin is a White House nominee for Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition.

Edited excerpts of the interview are below.

MELBOURNE, Fla. L3Harris Technologies won a U.S. Navy contract worth $80 million for the next phase of its electronic warfare (EW) modernization project for the F/A-18 fleet. 

ATLANTA. The MOSA Industry & Government Summit & Expo – scheduled for September 18-19, 2023, at the Georgia World Congress Center Atlanta in Atlanta – will feature conference sessions and exposition covering modular open system approach (MOSA) strategies, technology, and industry demonstrations.

Experts from the Navy Air Combat Electronics program office (PMA-209) recently participated in the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) and Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortia exposition in Dayton, Ohio. At the event the Avionics Architecture Team (AAT) for PMA-209 demonstrated several of its open architecture (OA) projects that are reducing software integration time and maintenance costs for the U.S. Navy. 

ANDOVER, Mass. Mercury Systems has garnered a three-year basic ordering agreement (BOA) worth as much as $50 million from the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) for engineering services and products relating to Mercury’s Advanced Data Transfer System (ADTS), aimed at deployment across multiple rotary-wing and tilt-rotor platforms. 

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems has won a $34.2 million contract from the U.S. Navy for engineering and test support services for the AN/ALQ-249 Next Generation Jammer (NGJ), currently in development for the Navy EA-18G Growler aircraft. 

FARNBOROUGH, U.K. The BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems Integration facility (Greenlawn, New York) has won an $18 milion indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract from the U.S. Navy Naval Air Systems Command for the production, test, and delivery of identification-friend-or-foe (IFF) transponders for military aircraft.