A VISION FOR OPEN ARCHITECTURE STANDARDS FOR FUTURE UNMANNED AIR SYSTEMS (UAS)

摘要

Booz Allen Hamilton recently completed a study to capture lessons learned from warfighters, technologist, acquirers, and industry developers to identify insights important in the development of the next generation unmanned air systems (UASs). Amongst the other findings, the study concluded that one of the most important design considerations for the next generation UASs would be an open systems architecture design. Closed system architectures lacked the "plug-and-play" flexibility to quickly adapt to the most current threats, and the ability to rapidly incorporate the latest sensors and weapons. When UASs relied on proprietary architectures, the primary avenue to meeting new demands was often an expensive redesign by the original system provider. An open architecture framework would enable more rapid system's technology insertion, improved operational utility and competitive pricing for the capability procured. Open systems architecture elements of interest to military systems managers include interoperable joint warfighting applications, secure information exchange, common hardware interfaces, modular system design, and open systems protocols. A key step to achieving this desired end state requires the military services and industry stakeholders to jointly eliminate the barriers to open architecture implementation.