The Navy purchases thousands of hardware and software items for different acquisition programs from multiple contractors. It is incredibly difficult and time-consuming for one program office to stay abreast of what is being acquired in others as well as what the Navy has already purchased that could potentially meet broader requirements. Therefore, a program manager’s inclination is to look outward toward industry for solutions. Compounding this issue, we live in an environment where software and hardware change overnight, and often we place too much initial emphasis on engineering a solution to a technical problem before it has been properly defined. To overcome these challenges, we must work smarter to understand technological problems before immediately jumping to solutions. We must develop a better understanding of the speed of our decision-making and the areas in which we remain organizationally stovepiped. For all this to come together, we need more transparency and accountability to protect our ideas: Open Architecture (OA) is the enabler.
In November 2012, the Navy unveiled a new OA strategy that aligns with the Chief of Naval Operations’ call for lower-cost platforms, modularity of payloads, and strategic reuse. OA’s core principles are modular design and disclosure, reusable application software, interoperability, life-cycle affordability, competition, and collaboration—or, in the simplest terms, transparency and reuse.
Another challenge is data rights. Software developed by industry contains a combination of government-sponsored, privately sponsored, and open-source software of various rights. These include Unlimited Rights, Government Purpose Rights, and several others. Over the past few decades, the Navy has not consistently exercised its authority to obtain Government Purpose Rights on hardware and software developed by our industry partners. When the Navy does not assert those rights, it loses the ability to share artifacts built at the government’s expense with other potential industry partners.
These two challenges get to the heart of the problem. If the Navy fully embraced OA, we could increase transparency and reuse by publishing more technical data related to the software and hardware already developed on the Navy’s dime. Total ownership costs could be reduced through competition and reducing redundant development efforts that have led to developing the same type of hardware and software systems for multiple acquisition programs.
A great example of success with OA is the Tactical Tomahawk Weapon Control System (TTWCS), developed by an integrated government and industry team. TTWCS is one of the three major segments of the Tomahawk Cruise Missile system, which capitalizes on OA through common reusable software components to support multiple U.S. submarine and surface-ship platforms as well as Royal Navy submarine platforms. During the past several decades, TTWCS has been upgraded to incorporate the latest technologies (e.g., processors, operating systems, programming languages). As a result of the OA design, the system can easily be scaled and hosted on several platforms containing unique launching system configurations. This means TTWCS has been used to successfully launch thousands of Tomahawk missiles in support of tactical operations.
Attempts have been made to solve the OA challenge by establishing Navy-owned and -controlled central repositories. Both Forge.mil Share, developed by the Program Executive Office for Integrated Weapons Systems, and the Major Program and Artifact Sharing System (MPASS), developed by Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, provide a process to share with qualified vendors hardware and software metadata such as documents for requirements, architecture, interface, design, and source code. As MPASS is populated, industry will have available an easily searchable system to identify and request information directly from major acquisition program managers. More contractors will then be able to compete for second- and third-generation contract awards, thereby driving down overall costs for the Navy. Additionally, major acquisition program managers will have access to a transparent database where they can identify in-house solutions in which the Navy has already invested.
Over the next five years, the Navy anticipates significant budget reductions. At the same time, military forces are aligning with new DOD strategic guidance that shifts our forward presence toward the Asia-Pacific region. The operational demand signal for a relevant and capable service is increasing as the overall budget shrinks. This is not the first time we have faced such a challenge; innovation has dug us out of this hole before. This time, however, the private and public sectors will have to innovate together and share more information to generate the leaner, more capable force the nation needs to maintain our forward presence. OA and innovation are the critical factors necessary for the U.S. military and industry to maintain their global advantage.