Developers of the future airborne capability environment are on the cusp of setting up the first-ever standard architecture for avionics systems in military procurement history.
Terry Carlson, the current chair of the FACE steering committee, said that the standards set for avionics technology set by the consortium of over 80 firms are in their third iteration.
“In the initial stages we were making big leaps in understanding,” he told Defense Daily. “Now, I would say, we are in the fine-tuning of these standards.”
FACE is a group of voluntary industry members that have signed on to develop hardware and software upgrades for current and future aircraft avionics and communications technology that adhere to a rigid set of interoperability standards. Those standards, the Pentagon intends, will be a carefully guarded element of every solicitation for platform enhancements and development going forward.
The idea is that within this open architecture environment, any company with requisite competency can bid for future hardware and software upgrades to programs after their initial operational capability.
There is no specific deadline for the FACE 3.0 standards to hit the market. The push is to enable program and platform managers to rapidly upgrade their vehicles and weapon systems in parallel with the pace of technological advances. That said, the standards to which industry will be held in the future also must change as technology advances, Carlson said. Hence the 3.0 version of FACE, which has gone through revision in the five years FACE has been around and will continue to be revised.
FACE has no transactional authority, but has set standards for commonality in both hardware and software that the Air Force, Army and Navy will likely require of bidders in the future.
As of now, there are available online a set of software verification tools through which bidders for government IT and avionics programs can run their products to find out whether they are FACE compliant. The most stringently adherent programs are labeled “built to FACE standards.”
The Northrop Grumman [NOC] effort to replace outdated UH-60 Black Hawk cockpits with digital displays is such a program. The retrofit kit was designed to be FACE compliant and as such can accept future software upgrades from any contracted company. This is a paradigm shift from the days, not too distant, when companies would sell a product to the government and jealously guard their intellectual property.
Ike Song, vice president of situational awareness systems for Northrop Grumman, said the program is on track to complete a comprehensive design review (CDR) and eventual integration into Black Hawks.
“The UH-60V program has completed successful PDR and is in preparation for the CDR,” he said. “As for the FACE compliance, all FACE required software modules are being modeled in preparation for full FACE certification.”
Northrop Grumman is contracted to replace old analogue cockpit systems with digital electronic flight instruments in the Army’s Black Hawks to upgrade them to the UH-60V designation. The infinitely scalable, interoperable mission equipment package includes enhanced pilot situational awareness and mission safety, decreased workload and life cycle cost, and a common training environment, the company said.
Currently products designed to FACE standards can only be verified through the online tools offered by the consortium. There soon will be established a third-party FACE certification organization that will be independent of both the U.S. government an FACE member companies to formally certify the technologies wishing to advertise products as FACE compliant, Carlson said.
Carlson is invited to speak at the 2015 Defense Daily Open Architecture Summit, to be held Nov. 4 at the Grand Hyatt, Washington, D.C. More information about the panel topics and speaker list can be found here: www.openarchitecturesummit.com.