Defining an Open System Architecture Standard for Defense Systems

For many years now, there have been efforts within the US defense community to adopt “Open System Architecture” principles (or OSA) for defense computing platforms. Stretching back to the mid-2000's there have been numerous efforts by all service branches to define sets of OSA principles or requirements on the embedded computing systems they procure and deploy. While these efforts have resulted in widespread adoption of POSIX functions for common tasks and a gradual shift in the use of common form factors and technologies such as VPX and Ethernet, there are still wide disparities between products from different suppliers, which creates difficulties for integrators. Product variations also make technology insertions or system configuration changes expensive, time consuming, and often locked to a particular vendor.

In 2019 the US defense embedded computing market underwent a transformation. Started in 2017, the Sensor Open Systems Architecture group (or SOSA) is an organization consisting of government, system integrators, and component suppliers who are working to craft an OSA standard for defense sensor systems. If successful, SOSA will standardize hardware implementations and form a guideline for system integration in order to encourage greater reuse and enable rapid future technology insertions.