FACE™ - Future Airborne Capability Environment

U.S. rival countries have been rapidly modernizing their militaries, with publicized advances that pose credible challenges to U.S. supremacy in all aspects of warfare: air, land, sea, space and cyberspace. On January 19, 2018 Secretary Mattis discussed the National Defense Strategy and emphasized the need to modernize key capabilities to address these threats. He stated: “To keep pace with our times, the department will transition to a culture of performance and affordability that operates at the speed of relevance. Success does not go to the country that develops a new technology first, but rather, to the one that better integrates it and more swiftly adapts its way of fighting. Our current bureaucratic processes are insufficiently responsive to the department's needs for new equipment. We will prioritize speed of delivery, continuous adaptation and frequent modular upgrades.”

Avionic systems are a case in point. They have been on an unaffordable trend due to complexity and cost, particularly in the evolution from hardwaredefined systems to modern software-defined systems, where the costs to develop, integrate, and maintain software continues to grow at an unsustainable rate. In response, The Open Group Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Consortium has established an open procurement environment that facilitates reuse to meet four core goals: improve affordability, speed, agility, and excellence. The FACE™ Consortium is a government and industry partnership dedicated to accomplish this using open industry standards, advanced integration, and maintenance technologies.