Published in Military Embedded Systems
Written by Ivan Straznicky
For many COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] vendors and VITA members, the Tri-Service Memo issued in January 2019 by the secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force was the highest validation of several decades of their combined efforts.
The memorandum clearly stated that, going forward, modular open systems approach (MOSA)-supporting standards “should be included in all requirements, programming and development activities for future weapon system modifications and new start development programs to the maximum extent possible.”
Examples of MOSA standards include the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) and CMOSS, both of which rely on OpenVPX hardware as their foundation.
For those individuals and companies who have worked together over the decades to further the activities of VITA and the VSO, this historic milestone can arguably be viewed as the point at which their collective efforts finally transitioned from evangelism to Department of Defense (DoD) mandate.
After years of working together to champion the performance, reliability, and cost benefits of COTS electronics, and the power of open architectures, that argument has emerged victorious.