By Geoff Fein
The Navy’s third report to the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on efforts to incorporate open architecture (OA) into contracts and programs shows the Navy has made strides in processes and practices, institutionalizing OA principles and lays out plans for implementing OA in the surface domain.
In FY ’08, SASC directed Navy Secretary (SECNAV) Donald Winter to submit a report commencing with the FY ’09 budget request outlining plans and progress for implementing OA.
Additionally, “the FY ’09 SASC report (110-35) directed that no greater than 50 percent of the amounts authorized for FY ’09 for the surface combatant combat system engineering program may be obligated under a sole source contract until 30 days after submission by the SECNAV of a detailed program plan for implementing OA for the Aegis combat system,” according to a letter from Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley to SASC Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.).
The first report to Congress detailed the history of the Navy OA, the role the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development and Acquisition) plays in providing leadership for Navy OA; the Navy’s long-term focus for implementing OA, and challenges the service faces in implementing OA. The report also contained information on the Software, Hardware Asset Re-use Enterprise, more commonly known as the SHARE library, and the Net-Centric Enterprise Solutions for Interoperability, also known as NESI, Stackley said.
The second report, delivered to Congress in May, described accomplishments of the naval enterprise and domains from Jan. 1 to March 31, 2008.
The third report, dated August 7, outlines accomplishments between April and June 2008 in:
- changing naval processes and business practices to use open systems architectures to rapidly field affordable, interoperable systems;
- providing naval OA systems engineering leadership to field common, interoperable capabilities more rapidly at reduced costs;
- changing Navy and Marine Corps cultures to institutionalize OA principles; and
- providing a detailed program plan for implementing OA for the Aegis combat system and surface domain.
Among the goals achieved were “PMA-272’s (Aviation Survivability) Electronic Warfare Self-Protection systems is applying the OA business model to the Air Force’s Cost effective Light Aircraft Missile Protection program–which is partially funded by the Navy–using Interface Control Documents (ICDs) as a key enabler. Working with common ICDs, an OA ‘plug & protect’ approach can be sued to protect Navy and Marine Corps aircraft,” Stackley said.
The developmental system scored two successes in live fire trials earlier this year, he added.
“PEO C4I (Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence), in collaboration with SPAWAR (Space and Naval Warfare Systems) 2.0 Contracts, is developing a logical decision tree to determine appropriate requirements to insert OA Language into solicitations and reuse standard CDRLs (Contracts Data Requirements Lists),” Stackley said in his report to SASC.
The Electronic Attack squadron at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash., got their first fleet of Boeing [BA] EA-18G Growlers ahead of schedule and on budget, because the “benefits of open systems and architecture allowed the integration of two major systems: the E/A-18G and the Integrated Capability III airborne electronic attack subsystem, Stackley said.
The submarine domain’s approach to merging multiple configurations of subsystems on Los Angeles, Seawolf, Virginia and SSGN-class boats will enable submarines to share a common baseline by July 2012, Stackley added.
The Marine Corps has taken a number of steps including reuse of specific system components. For example, the Composite Tracking Network uses the same software as the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability re-hosted onto a set of hardware deployable in a Humvee, Stackley said.
“Both the Spanish F105 program and the Australian Air Warfare Destroyer programs will be using Aegis 7 Phase 1 OA programs as a basis for their combat systems,” Stackley said. “Both programs have contributed to the development of Radar Control OA, which will be used on the Spanish Frigate, the Air Warfare Destroyers and U.S. Navy destroyers. These [Foreign Military Sales] efforts and follow-on life-cycle support represent changes in culture that will contribute to sustaining the combat system engineering industrial base, the radar system industrial base and furthers interoperability with our allies.”
The Navy last month delivered the first OA-base Advanced Capability Build 08/Technology Insertion 08 hardware and software to the USS Bunker Hill (CG-52). The CG-47 class will complete transition to a network-based OA environment in 2016.
By transitioning three DDG-51s a year beginning in 2012 and running through 2016 and then moving to six ships per year from FY ’17 onward, the 62-ship class will wrap up its transition to a network-based OA environment by 2025, Stackley said.
The next report will address surface combat systems and how incremental improvements will be made to those systems such that upgrades can be accomplished more frequently and at a lower cost, he added.