Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) are directing the Navy to look into standing up a new development mechanism to further improve the sea service’s efforts to stand up more open architecture (OA)-based systems.
As part of the committee’s draft of the fiscal year 2012 defense authorization bill, panel members have requested Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to provide a report to the congressional defense committees on the new strategy, to be included in the Navy’s upcoming FY ’13 budget proposal, according to a report accompanying the SASC legislation.
The crux of this new plan, the report states, will be to stand up a number of “innovation centers” within the Navy’s research and development structure to allow military and civilian personnel to work ongoing OA issues–ranging from actual system creation to fleet integration, according to the report.
“An innovation center approach would house Navy open architecture systems in use by the fleet today and would provide an environment to speed up new technology development and testing, without compromising the Navy’s essential test and evaluation facilities in use for other programs,” it states.
As envisioned, these new innovation centers would be “a Navy-led laboratory with state of the art software and hardware” that can be used to emulate combat environments and scenarios in which these systems would be eventually deployed.
The facilities would be open to all third-party or non-military developers to test next-generation open architecture applications and see if they are survivable in a wartime setting. “The committee believes that this could lead to more rapid introduction of innovative technology into the fleet,” Senate lawmakers write.
Before the Senate panel’s proposal, the Navy had been using a “software library” in which service and industry counterparts could test OA-developed prototype hardware and software to ensure it will be compatible with service specifications.
While noting the library is “a great step forward” in getting OA-based technologies onto Navy ships faster, committee members noted several flaws in the current system. Aside from being tremendously cumbersome, “validation of software programs deposited by the government is very difficult” under the library system, the report states.
Further, the catalogue of software and hardware in the library “may be incomplete or missing…components that would enable successful running of the program,” it adds. Under this new innovation center approach, the Navy will be able to avoid those gaps in the current system, while allowing more access to those service-specific software and hardware technologies.
If approved in the final version of the FY ’12 bill, this new approach could pay huge dividends for the Navy, as service officials look to get two major open architecture programs for its surface fleet up and running.
The first program, Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program, is designed to replace the slate of mission-specific command, control and communications suites on board the Navy’s surface fleet and replace them with a single, OA-based C4I system.
Sea service officials are also looking to integrate a similar OA package into its fleet of Aegis destroyers, via the Aegis Destroyer modification program, known as ACB 12. That effort is set to enter into intensive integration and testing at the end of this year.