MOSA Virtual Summit recap
StoryMarch 03, 2022
Experts from the U.S. Army and defense industry discussed Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) strategies for defense electronic applications in air, land, sea, and spectrum domains at our first annual MOSA Virtual Summit.
Kicking off the conference was Giorgio Bertoli, Assistant Director for the Spectrum Dominance and Intelligence portfolio within the U.S. Army’s C5ISR Center, in his keynote address “C5ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS) ‘The Army’s SOSA Instantiation.’”
MOSA is critical as “We cannot continue to integrate independent, self-contained solutions within our platform any longer,” Bertoli asserted in his keynote. “C5ISR moves too fast to possibly think you can follow a standard acquisition process where you buy a turnkey black-box system that will sustain you for the next 10-20 years – it just can’t happen.”
He said that this closed approach:
- Limits upgradability
- Increases sustainment tails
- Reduces resiliency
- Increases training burden
- Limits configurability
- Limits platform-agnostic solutions
- Limits competition
- Delays fielding of upgrades
Bertoli focused his presentation on C4ISR/Electronic Warfare Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS), which he calls an instantiation of the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard.
“The two are completely intertwined. CMOSS is sort of the Army’s version of SOSA, and we tailor it to Army applications,” Bertoli notes. Both specs are fully compatible, he adds.
Bertoli also detailed the CMOSS Mounted Form Factor (CMFF), which will enable Army commanders to mobilize CMOSS in mobile platforms, including the Army Stryker vehicle. Bertoli says that the Army’s “demonstrated successful standards implementation in a multicard chassis integrated on a Stryker CMFF will integrate PNT [position, navigation, and timing], comms, and EW [electronic warfare] within a common CMOSS architecture on tactical vehicles.” This form factor will provide “extensive flexibility to configure platforms based on mission requirements [as well as enable] rapid insertion of new technology to meet emerging threats,” he adds.
Bertoli went on to discuss small-form-factor challenges within a MOSA context. For more details, read Technology Editor Emma Helfrich’s feature, titled “Unmanned ISR payloads leverage MOSA designs,” here.
To see his entire presentation and the other sessions from the MOSA Virtual Summit, visit https://www.bigmarker.com/series/mosa-virtual-summit/series_summit?utm_bmcr_source=Editorial.
The first session – “MOSA for Military Aviation Platforms” – covered aviation MOSA strategies, specifically the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Technical Standard, and featured speakers Chip Downing, Senior Market Development Director, Aerospace & Defense, RTI; and Christopher Crook, Senior Software Analyst at Intrepid, supporting Program Executive Office (PEO) Aviation (AVN).
Session 2, moderated by Dean Holman, president and executive director of VITA, dug into SOSA and how MOSA strategies impact EW applications. This session featured presentations from Bob Kirk, Chief Sales Officer, Annapolis Micro Systems; Rodger Hosking, director of sales, Mercury, Upper Saddle River, N.J.; and Andy Jaros, VP IP Sales and Marketing, Flex-Logix.
Session 3 covered cross-domain solutions: “Applying a MOSA Strategy Across Multiple Domains” featured Mark Littlefield, Sr. Manager, Embedded Computing Solutions, Elma Electronic; Aneesh Kothari, VP of marketing for Systel; Craig Powell, director of business development – Army for Systel; Robert Power, field application engineer – West for Milpower Source; and Jason DeChiaro, System Architect/Product Manager, Curtiss-Wright.
In his keynote, Bertoli mentioned that “MOSA is near and dear to my heart, [I’m] very passionate about it.”
