The constrained budget environment along with the high cost associated with maintaining, upgrading and testing platforms and systems developed under closed architecture models has prompted the Air Force to move toward open system approaches, the service’s military deputy for acquisition recently said.
Lt. Gen. Charles Davis said smaller budgets mean the Air Force needs to move away from costly legacy designs and dependence on single prime integrators on major programs that can lead to unaffordable lifecycle costs and make it more difficult to quickly and relatively cheaply insert new technologies.
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| Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Davis speaking at Defense Daily’s Open Architecture Summit Nov. 12. Photo by Dana Rene, special to Defense Daily. |
“Our budget is definitely going to shrink,” Davis said at Defense Daily’s annual Open Architecture Summit in Washington Tuesday. “We cannot afford to go to a single prime contractor that we are beholden to for the life of any system and be able to afford that for some time to come.”
Open architecture systems are seen as a way to promote innovation and enable more rapid technology insertions, reduce total ownership costs, phase out sole sourced legacy systems that become expensive to maintain and upgrade, and re-compete programs through their lifecycle. Davis noted the Pentagon’s senior leadership has continued to identify open architecture models as an increased priority and is mandating that the military services employ the approach.
Davis said a key aspect of integrating open architecture practices into acquisition programs is to develop the right business model that entices industry but is equally beneficial to the government.
“Having looked at all the Air Force programs that we have right now, I‘ll tell you one thing that really becomes the imperative of having to make this work or not, and that is going to be the business case you put behind it for the companies to come in,” Davis said.
“You do have to kind of, if you will, force the companies to come in to some degree, but then offer it in a way that is going to be worth their while to make it happen,” he added.
Industry and government observers have noted that the Air Force has been slower to move in the direction of open architecture systems than some of its counterparts, such as the Navy. That was highlighted by a Government Accountability Office report in July that said the Air Force has not implemented open architecture approaches in unmanned aerial systems at the same rate the Navy has. The report said only one of the Air Force’s three major UAS programs has plans to implement an open systems approach on fielded aircraft, compared to three of four naval systems.
But Davis said the Air Force has been making progress in recent years. “We have a couple organizations within the Air Force that over the last few years have taken this on with some zeal,” he said. “We’ve made some progress, and we are really trying to position ourselves in a couple areas, whether this is going to be in future platforms, or future systems of platforms, to try to bring the open architecture approach into this.”
Davis said the Air Force is already designing and in some cases fielding open systems in radars and subsystems, and is using open interface solutions for ground control systems capable of operating different types unmanned aerial vehicles and their sensors.
Another critical reason for moving to open systems is the expense associated with testing closed designs and the complexity of adding a new or upgraded piece to it, Davis said.
“We cannot afford to do the oppressive and regressive testing that is required of closed systems architectures over the life of it and not be able to just test a piece as you put it to it because it’s too expensive and it takes too long,” Davis said.