- Open interface standards with modular systems help facilitate continuous adaptation and upgrades
- Can be applied to legacy systems, new systems, or any components from within those systems over the system life cycle
- The modular approach uses an architecture that separates the system into major functions and elements, which works together across interfaces in conformance with widely supported, consensus-based standards that comply with DoD directives.
- Greater cost efficiency without multiple different solutions developed to accomplish the same functional capability for each individual platform
- MOSA adoption has been a key focus of the Department of Defense with the inclusion of recent legislation in the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA exists to authorize appropriations each fiscal year for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes. In 2021, the NDAA further expanded on the implementation of Modular Open Systems Approaches in its agenda:
- NDAA 2021 - SEC. 804.
IMPLEMENTATION OF MODULAR OPEN SYSTEMS APPROACHES- Section 804 requires the DoD to issue regulations and guidance to facilitate DoD’s access to and use of modular system interfaces. The regulations and guidance, in relevant part, must include requirements that:
- The program officer for each weapon system characterize the desired modularity of the weapon system for which the program officer is responsible; and
- Each contract following the implementation of the regulations and guidance includes requirements for the delivery of interfaces for modular systems deemed relevant in the acquisition strategy or documentation.
- Section 804 requires the DoD to issue regulations and guidance to facilitate DoD’s access to and use of modular system interfaces. The regulations and guidance, in relevant part, must include requirements that:
- The regulations and guidance apply to any program office responsible for the prototyping, acquisition, or sustainment of a new or existing weapon system and may be extended to software-based non-weapon systems, including business systems and cybersecurity systems, one year after the regulations are implemented but not after two years from implementation.
- Section 804 also amends 10 U.S.C. § 2446a to expand the requirement to use a modular open systems approach to the maximum extent practicable to programs beyond major defense acquisition programs. Section 804 also amends 10 U.S.C. § 2320 to grant government purpose rights to modular system interfaces developed exclusively at private expense or in part with federal funds. Section 804 further requires DoD to establish a central
UPCOMING EVENTS
MOSA Industry and Government Summit & Expo 2026
September 22 - 24, 2026 - Gaylord Resort and Convention Center - National Harbor, MD
RECENT NEWS
Navy to Take More Control Over Development of Open Architecture Systems
August 27, 2025
FACE 4th Annual Special Edition - feature article by CAPT Jarrod Hair, PMA-209 Program Manager
2025
https://militaryembedded.com/magazine/issuu/ey8qp3qvtxi
NAVAL Modular Open Systems Approach Guidebook V1 Published
February 2025
This guidebook is designed for every Program Manager in the Navy and Marine Corp. To receive a copy, contact Jacob Glassman, Senior Technical Advisor, ASN RD&A at: [email protected]
OUSD (R&E) Releases: Implementing a Modular Open Systems Approach in Department of Defense Programs
February 2025
https://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MOSA-Implementation-Guidebook-27Feb2025-Cleared.pdf
Latest Tri-Service MOSA Memo
December 17, 2024
MEMORANDUM FOR SERVICE ACQUISITION EXECUTIVES AND PROGRAM EXECUTIVE OFFICERS - Modular Open Systems Approach for Department of Defense Weapon Systems https://www.cto.mil/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Tri-Service-Memo-Signed-17Dec2024.pdf
Open Development Standards are Key to Keeping the US Military on Top
December 9, 2024
Article / Opinion by Nick Guertin and Jacob Glassman
Interview with CAPT Jarrod Hair, PMA-209 PM
November 20, 2023 - Military Embedded Systems Magazine
NAVAIR Leveraging MOSA in Avionics Systems
MOSA Industry and Government Summit & Expo
September 18 - 19, 2023 - Atlanta, Georgia World Congress Center
KEYNOTE: HON. Nickolas H. Guertin
Navy Demonstrates Latest Open Architecture Solutions
December 20, 2022 - FACE and SOSA Consortium Exposition in Dayton, Ohio
NAVAIR Employees Elected to Serve as Navy Representatives in Avionics Consortium
July 14, 2022
U.S. Air Force - FACE™ and SOSA™ Consortia Technical Interchange Meeting 2022
Tuesday, September 27 - "Going Faster with Open Standards" - Dayton Convention Center
The U.S. Air Force - FACE™ and SOSA™ Technical Interchange Meeting and Expo, hosted by the Air Force Lifecycle Management Center (AFLCMC), is an important opportunity to discover new advancements and the progress being made for functionality and interoperability of modular open system environments. It features DoD leaders and members in the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) and the Sensor Open System Architecture (SOSA) Consortia. This year's event will feature a Keynote Speaker and expert presentations by a cross-section of the defense community, industry, and academia. Targeted to Program managers and procurement managers across all the services as well as their contractors and suppliers, attendees will hear presentations from industry and government detailing the positive impact of FACE and SOSA adoption for buyers (end users), suppliers, integrators, and business representatives, including both Business and Technical lessons learned.
AFLCMC will be providing a Tri-Service Open Architecture Interoperability demo running on a hardware chassis aligned with the SOSA Standard. This demonstration will consist of a 19-slot Herrick Technology Labs chassis with multiple Single Board Computers (SBCs) running different Government open architectures (e.g. OMS/UCI, HOST, CMOSS, MORA, Redhawk/TOA, FACE Approach, etc). They will have an RF source (walkie-talkie) driving a RF tuner card, MORA and Redhawk/TOA decode the signal and publish over OMS/UCI which is also integrated with HOST and the FACE Technical Standard for chassis management and avionics displays.
The TIM and Expo are open to the public and free to attend.
TSOA-ID 2022
Tuesday, March 15 - Solomons Inn Resort and Marina in Maryland
The Tri-Service Open Architecture Interoperability Demonstration (TSOA-ID) showcased the cohesive collaboration between the NAVAIR Air Combat Electronics program office PMA-209, U.S. Army PEO Aviation, and DEVCOM – U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command C5ISR Center, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC), Industry Partners, and Academia. The Services engaged with the more than 450 attendees involved in the rapidly growing Open Architecture/Open Standards (OS) ecosystem, successfully demonstrating the integration and use of OS on each of the Services Technology Platforms. An Army communications card was installed and integrated on each of the branches platforms and were communicating across the demo floor. The Army and Air Force comm’s status were being displayed on the Navy’s UH-60 flight simulator. The use of HOST/SOSA™ hardware and FACE™ software enabled the rapid integration of the Communications Card on the three services chassis’.
Value takeaway: Open Standards being developed by NAVAIR AAT PMA-209, the Army and Air Force has now dramatically decreased integration time from multiple months/years to a mere few weeks!
PAST EVENTS
MOSA for Defense and Warfare Summit
April 8-9, 2026 - Natonal Harbor, MD
MOSA Industry and Government Summit & Expo 2025
August 27 - 29, 2025 - Gaylord National Harbor & Convention Center
Today
- NAVAIR has advanced from two programs trialing MOSA in 2020 to five programs in 2021. Other programs within NAVAIR are increasingly interested in this work, helping to drive growing efforts for MOSA, open architectures, and open standards.
- PMA-209’s Open Architecture Group, the Avionics Architecture Team (AAT), is collaborating with both Army and Air Force resident OA experts on innovative OA work products and knowledge sharing, in addition to designing a roadmap toward one open marketing ecosystem vision that mutually benefits government and industry.
NAVAIR PMA-209 Current Strategies and Motivation
- Short term strategy: Unite and coordinate NAVAIR program offices in trialing FACE and HOST on highly re-usable common solutions.
- Long term strategy: In the long-term, we are investigating how MOSA can be implemented strategically throughout the entire Naval enterprise. Overtime, we expect to experience a complete shift in the current acquisition culture across the DoD for greater strategic advantages and cost savings. The long-term adoption of MOSA will present new opportunities and the maximum possible advantages for our warfighters.
- Motivation: Our warfighters engage with complex conflicts and operational objectives that test the endurance of our defense platforms every day. The world is rapidly changing and the threats of the future will not slow their advance for our military to catch up. In such a dynamic world, the “stove-pipe” platform acquisition process of the past can no longer bear the weight of our nation’s wellbeing. To face and conquer these growing challenges the Navy and its support system of vendors need to come together and embrace this game-changing modular open systems approach. MOSA will enable adaptability, cost efficiency, fast time to deploy, and reusability for any products related to avionics systems across all Navy systems.
Powerful Sentiments
- The successful adoption and integration of such open architecture standards recently in certain Navy platforms are giving way on a fundamental shift from what has been decades-long procedures. With broader understanding, new acquisition and adoption of MOSA is being addressed in program offices in the DoD. Collaboration between the Navy and Industry are resulting in a change of how requirements are made, programs are funded, and how platforms (efforts) can strongly benefit each other in the short and long term. Below are some powerful statements from leadership:
- VADM Dean Peters, Commander, Naval Air Systems Command (retired) shared comments (paraphrased) during his March 2021 Keynote Address for the FACE™ and SOSA™ Consortium virtual Technical Interchange Meeting:
- “What we’re trying to do is bring a lot of disparate systems together to show how they can be interoperable. At a demonstration I witnessed at a Sea-Air-Space event, was an attack/assault scenario working on a rescue system. The demo used different systems that brought together multiple platforms. And the demo team had incorporated a FACE-conformant software (a wrapper, if you will) that was placed around the software of a particular platform or sensor, and then integrated. It went off without a hitch, just fantastic! It is clear key advantages with open standards are: system portability across platforms, rapid capability insertion, improved interoperability, and reduced costs. And to make Open Architecture/Open Standards successful, we’ve got to do this collaboratively as a government and industry team. VADM Peters’ parting words in his Keynote to the audience: “What will you do today, what will you do this week, what will you do to take open standards to the next level?
- Brig. Gen. Rob Barrie, Program Executive Officer, Army Aviation at the FACE™ and SOSA™ Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) 09/14/21:
- “The challenge we have is that capability is developed in a very platform centric way. We are aligned from a resource perspective, from a requirements perspective, and then a material development perspective. So, everything we’re doing inside PEO Aviation is trying to blow that up, where appropriate, inside platforms. Instead of having platform decisions made by a project manager that is specifically the best value and best approach for that platform, we want to take a step back and say can we make an investment in a platform, and then apply that investment across multiple platforms.
...
We are backed up now with policy and governance, and senior leader support that has not existed in the past. This is not just recognition that we need to do this at a low level, or a high level. They are both aligned and what we have now is momentum and energy towards solving this very critical problem.
...
With this team and as we’re aligned across DoD, we will continue to pursue this very aggressively to the point where it will be in our source selection criteria. It will be something that we consider very early in programs. If we are not compliant with what we want to do with open systems approach, programs will get left behind.”
- “The challenge we have is that capability is developed in a very platform centric way. We are aligned from a resource perspective, from a requirements perspective, and then a material development perspective. So, everything we’re doing inside PEO Aviation is trying to blow that up, where appropriate, inside platforms. Instead of having platform decisions made by a project manager that is specifically the best value and best approach for that platform, we want to take a step back and say can we make an investment in a platform, and then apply that investment across multiple platforms.
- VADM Dean Peters, Commander, Naval Air Systems Command (retired) shared comments (paraphrased) during his March 2021 Keynote Address for the FACE™ and SOSA™ Consortium virtual Technical Interchange Meeting:
NAVAIR PMA-209, the Air Combat Electronics Office, supports and promotes Open Standards to other PMAs and outside vendors looking to modernize their products. Some standards PMA-209 actively supports include the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACETM), Sensors Open System Architecture (SOSATM), and Open Mission Systems (OMS). PMA-209 also supports an additional open standard developed and sponsored in-house: the Hardware Open Systems Technologies (HOST) standard. Below you can find more information for each standard at their individual websites.
- HOST Standards
- Hardware Open Systems Technologies (HOST) is a standards framework that applies open architectures to high-performance embedded computing. Through use of standardized interfaces, HOST provides the interchangeability of newer technologies and promotes the reuse of hardware designs for existing and future platforms. HOST facilitates affordable and supportable system development and modernization.
- FACE Standards
- The FACE Technical Standard is an open avionics standard for software developed by Government, Industry, and Academia. The FACE Approach is focused on improving portability, modularity, and cost savings by implementation of its component-based software standard.
- SOSA Standards
- The SOSA approach establishes guidelines for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems. The objective is to allow flexibility in the selection and acquisition of sensors and subsystems that provide sensor data collection,
- processing, exploitation, communication, and related functions over the full life cycle of the C 4ISR system. SOSA architecture incorporates both hardware and software components to handle demanding processing and data requirements, ease system upgrades, reduce total cost of ownership, and promote competitive acquisition with minimal system reworks.
- OMS Standards
- Open Missions Systems (OMS) focuses on the interfaces between software Services and hardware Subsystems, and how data is exchanged across those interfaces. Use of the standard allows weapon systems, services, and subsystems/payloads/sensors to interact and communicate using common data formats. The OMS Standard does not tell you what to build, nor how to build it. OMS provides a standard set of tools so that anyone can use those tools to extend, modify, and/or replace what is currently fielded in existing systems.
HOST:
- Navy Promotes Latest Hardware Open Architecture Technical Standard – NEW Version 5.0: https://www.navair.navy.mil/news/Navy-promotes-latest-hardware-open-architecture-technical-standard/Tue-02212023-1352
- HOST Acquisition Guide (Coming soon)
- HOST Standard v.4.1 (download)
- HOST Tutorial – Overview Snapshot (tri-fold)
- HOST Standard Tier 1 – Overview Framework
- HOST Standard Tier 2 (OpenVPX Core Tech Standard
- HOST Standard Tier 3 (Contact PMA-209 for Specification Examples)
- MBSE: Model-Based Open Architecture
FACE:
- FACE Verification Authority Service Offering
- FACE Post Implementation and Integration Review Board and Metrics
- FACE Consortium Conformance Verification Authority – How to Apply
- FACE Consortium – How to Get a Product Certified
- FACE Consortium Certified Products Registry
SOSA:
- SOSA Consortium Acquisition Guide (Coming soon)
- SOSA Consortium Business Guide V1.0 (Coming soon)
- SOSA Consortium Marketing Guidelines
- SOSA Technical Standard Reference Architecture Edition 1.0
- SOSA 2021 Technical Interchange Papers
OMS:
