Northrop Grumman [NOC] recently announced it has verified the concept of easier, faster and more cost-effective deployment of third-party technologies into programs of record through demonstrations on its open systems network infrastructure.
The demonstrations were conducted on March 18 in Northrop Grumman’s C2 Futures Lab to showcase the capabilities of four companies participating in Small Business Program for Engineering,
Experimentation and Deployment (SPEED), the company program to mentor small businesses through collaboration.
“The purpose of SPEED is to assist small businesses in developing and deploying technology into current and future programs,” said Mike Twyman, vice president of Integrated Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence Systems for Northrop Grumman’s Information Systems sector. “By creating an environment that fosters small business innovation, we broaden our network of idea factories.And, by combining the inventive ideas with our understanding of open architectures and C2 systems, integration expertise and knowledge of defense programs, we offer a much higher success rate for those ideas and deliver superior capabilities to our warfighters.”
The demonstrated technologies, including commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products from non-defense companies, are fully interoperable with the C2 Futures Lab Modular Open Systems Approach-Competitive(tm) (MOSA-C(tm)) network infrastructure.
Beatty and Company Computing used COTS technology to provide advanced Cross Domain Solution/Multiple Level Security (CDS/MLS) systems for the Defense Department.
CenterBeam presented real-time awareness of network performance and security via a Web interface tool.
Juno Technologies‘ demonstration simulated remote connectivity to a shipboard network with its rapidly deployable fly-away kits.
Syzygy Technologies demonstrated using its diskless, stateless client system architecture for flexible and affordable security solutions.
Northrop Grumman’s MOSA-C(tm) is a strategic business and engineering process that realizes the life-cycle benefits of open-systems architecture and COTS components and software. The process ensures enduring solutions that will improve interoperability and lower the total cost of ownership.
The C2 Futures Lab is part of a nationwide network of research and development nodes that link capabilities in state-of-the-art cybersecurity, command and control applications, information systems and business innovation. The lab infrastructure was built upon MOSA-C(tm) to provide a framework that encourages commercial product advancement and competition, technology insertion and integration.