Operational Capability Advancement Through Open Architecture Application - Flipbook - Page 11
Our Perspective – It’s All About The
Mission
The global political environment and associated military challenges are rapidly changing. For the 昀椀rst time since the Cold War,
the increasing threat of peer-on-peer confrontation requires the development of more complex systems. No longer can we assume to impose air dominance on an operational theatre and 昀氀y remotely controlled propeller aircraft unhindered. The technical
domains of electronic warfare, long-range weapons, layered Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance
(ISTAR), air defense, and communications are highly contested areas that span land, sea, air, and space. Maintaining operational effectiveness in all of these capability areas is critical if we are to deliver a winning competitive edge for our war昀椀ghters.
To have the best chance of success, military planners must take a holistic view of military requirements, including present and
expected future challenges, and assess them alongside engineering experts who understand the art of the possible and can
develop an engineering strategy for the required military capability, rather than for any particular vehicle platform.
The mission-focused engineering requirements can subsequently be derived to particular systems. Although this is not dissimilar to current requirements analysis, OA allows common speci昀椀cation of all areas where requirements overlap exists between
programs. Understanding the holistic mission and the deliberate use of OA allows program common elements to be built to the
same standard or use the same products.
Having a common data strategy and standard software component speci昀椀cation enables tool-based software generation, providing a realistic path for centralized control of key algorithms within Government agencies. This would enable rapid 昀氀eet-wide
upgrades in response to battle昀椀eld intelligence, without the need to engage the multitude of OEMs for all the affected systems.
To realize the full potential for OA to deliver advanced capability bene昀椀ts, there needs to be structure within the enterprise of
interest, whether that is DoD, Navy, Air Force, Army, Space Force, multiples, or sub-domains of any of those. The enterprise
de昀椀nition will be determined by the scope of the requirements for each mission assessment:
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Solicit input from all relevant sources to implement an Enterprise Architecture Framework assessment of the operational, security, safety, functional, interoperability, etc. requirements of the represented mission capabilities.
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The Enterprise Architecture Framework drives out the identi昀椀cation of candidate common products, where modularity is
valuable, and provides traceability of products to business goals.
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The data boundaries of common products can be captured in Domain Model packages, and standard functional descriptions can be captured in a model.
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Standard product speci昀椀cations can then be captured in various standards depending on the implementation requirements of each Program.
The Data Model packages ensure semantic interoperability and a testable data boundary, which, along with the functional
descriptions, provide the top-level product requirements from which implementation speci昀椀cations can be derived according to
different implementation standards.
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