Transcript of a sponsored podcast discussion on the military's work with The Open Group to develop a computing environment that will smooth cost and schedule issues for new systems.

1. FACE Initiative Takes Aim at Improved Interoperability and
Standards Among Future Military Avionics Platforms
Transcript of a sponsored podcast discussion on the military's work with The Open Group to
develop a computing environment that will smooth cost and schedule issues for new systems.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor:
The Open Group
Dana Gardner: Hi. This is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you're
listening to BriefingsDirect. Today, we present a sponsored podcast discussion,
coming to you from The Open Group Conference in Boston, the week of July 19,
2010.
We've assembled a panel to explore a new military aircraft systems
interoperability consortium and effort, the Future Airborne Capability
Environment (FACE), which aims to promote and better support interoperability
and standardization among future military avionics platforms across several branches of the U.S.
Armed Forces.
We will define FACE, how it came about, and examine the consortium's basic goals under the
tutelage of The Open Group.
Here to help better understand the promise and potential for FACE to improve costs, spur
upgrades, flexibility, and accelerate the components' development agility is our panel. We are
here with David Lounsbury. He is Vice President for Collaboration Services at The Open Group.
Welcome.
David Lounsbury: Hi, Dana. How are you?
Gardner: I'm great. We're also here with Mike Williamson, Deputy Program Manager for
Mission Systems with the Navy's Air Combat Electronics Program Office. Welcome to the show.
Mike Williamson: Dana, thanks, it’s good to be here.
Gardner: Mike, tell us a little bit about what FACE is and the history that led up to it?
Williamson: Sometimes it’s easier to describe a program by saying what it’s not. FACE is not a
program. FACE is not a computer. FACE is not a software package. FACE is an environment,
and it’s specifically set up as an environment. It was an idea that came about to try to reduce
costs, improve interoperability across naval aircraft, and to get capabilities out to the fleet faster
and quicker, as best we can.

2. FACE started out as a Navy program. As we started looking around to see what other services
were doing, we found that the Army and the Air Force were also doing similar things and trying
to go down that same path.
The Army had a program called Integrated Data Modem (IDM). The Air Force was doing a
program called Universal Network Interface (UNI). We got together with them and are now
teaming up to put this consortium together and go forward to define standards for what FACE
will be.
Gardner: In general terms, what are the problems that we need to solve here?
Cost and schedule
Williamson: The primary problems are cost and schedule. The costs of getting systems to the
fleet today are going up. Primarily, it's driven by testing and by the
fact that the systems that we have on aircraft today are not open.
As for schedule, it takes a minimum of two years, once a new
capability is defined, to get it fielded on our aircraft today. We
need to reduce that timeline.
Gardner: For the benefit of our listeners, we're talking about the avionic systems. Can you tell
us a little bit more about the actual systems and some of the capabilities that we're addressing
with this program?
Williamson: We're really addressing all of the capabilities and all of the systems onboard the
aircraft. In the past, we identified a requirement and usually developed a system to meet that
requirement.
What we are trying to do with FACE now is to develop a computer environment that’s on the
aircraft already. As we define new capabilities and new things that we want to put out into the
fleet, we can host software in the computer environment that’s already there, rather than building
a brand new box, software, or program for every single capability that we put out there.
Gardner: Dave, I think The Open Group has seen this issue before, right?
Lounsbury: Yeah. It’s very interesting. We've got a number of activities that are on this
government-industry boundary, where some of the lessons that industry learned about how open
standards can bring agility and help control your cost can benefit military systems like this.
I want to pick up on a thread that you mentioned about schedule, because there’s two sides to
that coin. The testing and deployment schedule is a real issue for agility for our forces. The one
thing we know is that threats change all of the time, and we need the ability to field new
capabilities quickly, both as the mission changes and also as the technology evolves.

3. We really need that modularity within the necessary structures of testing for things that are going
to be used, and be able to get those new capabilities in the cycle quickly and get them out to the
war fighters.
Gardner: So how did The Open Group become involved, and what do you expect to be doing
vis-à-vis the FACE effort?
Similar areas
Lounsbury: The Open Group has a couple of areas similar to this. We've got our Real-time and
Embedded Systems Forum for some of the fundamental standards.
We've been running a consortium called DirectNet, which is very similar to FACE
in the sense that it is principally focused on a defense need, but in the context of
open systems. Through connections developed there, Mike found us and we talked
about what we can do to organize.
Typically, what The Open Group does is provide a structure. Members come in,
they bring their business expertise, their subject matter expertise, and operate. What we provide
is the framework, where we can have an open consortium that has a balance of interest between
the suppliers of components, all government agency programs doing procurement, and the
integrators who put it all together. We've got the proven process at The Open Group to make sure
that we have that openness that's important for protecting all of the parties.
Gardner: Mike, tell me about milestones and timelines? How far into this effort are we, and
what might the fruits of this labor be over time?
Williamson: This idea really started about a year ago in the Navy, within PMA-209, the program
office that I represent here, the Combat Electronics Program Office, at the Naval Air Systems
Command. We started looking at what we could do and what we needed to do.
The timeline is very, very tight. We're looking at having some kind of standards defined by first
quarter of calendar year 2011 -- next year. By the end of March, we're looking to have defined a
set of standards on what the FACE environment will look like, because we have procurements
coming out at that time that we intend to have FACE be part of those requests for proposals
(RFPs) that are going to be coming out.
Gardner: And for you, Dave, at The Open Group, what do you see as some of the existing
efforts that have taken place that you could look to for some guidance? Are there processes,
standards, or technologies that will already be available for FACE?
Lounsbury: It's very early, and we're just starting to learn the technical requirements. There are
a few that we know that we are going to need. We've talked about the need for operating system
kernels that keep the various levels of information to various levels of sensitivity separate. And,

4. there's an active program in our Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum called MILS that's
addressing that. I think there will be many that we will discover going forward.
There is also a good background. The Open Group has worked with some other government
activities -- the Modular Open Systems Architecture folk. We've got quite a reservoir of expertise
there. What we're going to be doing principally is marshaling, as always, the expertise of the
members to address various parts of the problem.
Gardner: Let's look to some commonality, Mike, between the commercial world and the efforts
for your avionics platforms, this notion of modular and the right balance between components,
silos, and an overarching system. Tell us where you expect this to go, not only in terms of your
agility, but into better architecture.
Getting beyond
Williamson: One of the things that we have looked at is the fact that commercial industry is
doing this. Commercial aviation is already doing a lot of this. We've not been able to do that
within naval aviation to date, and primarily that's been driven by safety-of-flight issues, issues
within our operability, and issues with how we contract for things. We need to get beyond that.
We're actually using the model of what commercial aviation has done, with open systems, open
source software, licensed software, and those kinds of things, to ask how we can bring that into
our platforms. We need to have an environment that we can have a library of software
applications that can be used across multiple platforms in the same environment.
That solves two problems for us. One, it gets capabilities to the fleet cheaper and faster. And two,
it solves the interoperability issues that we have today, where even sometimes when we have the
same standards, two different platforms implement the same standards in two different ways and
they can't talk to each other. They are not interoperable. Those are the things that we are trying to
solve with this.
Lounsbury: I want to pick up on something you mentioned there about following the
commercial world, and you articulated a few business drivers in there, like cost, time to market,
and things like that. One of the explicit goals of FACE, and we performed a business work group
to address these, is to talk about the business-model issues. What does open licensing mean in a
government context? What would be appropriate ways of sharing intellectual property rights
(IPR) in the run up to this?
These are all things that commercial people are familiar with through years of standards activity,
but it's kind of new to some of the players in the government space. So, we're going to make sure
that those things are explicitly addressed. It’s not just the technological solution, though that’s the
critical part, but the fact that people can actually buy -- and that we will have a marketplace of --
components that can be licensed and reused.
It's early on how we are going to do that, but it’s a very active topic inside the consortium.

5. Gardner: Do you see an extensibility that this effort with FACE might have some bearing on
where you could go in other areas of either the military or government?
Lounsbury: Certainly. Obviously, we started FACE. The Navy came to The Open Group, but
once the word got out, the Army and Air Force are on board. So, we've started to branch out into
agencies.
The government is a complex place, and there are lot of programs, so principal growth will be
different programs inside the government. But, we do envision that some of the things that will
be developed here may be applicable to other systems . Part of the vision is, in fact, how does
this start to overlap with the commercial avionics practice that Mike mentioned earlier.
Gardner: And, we've got our timeline. We understand that there are going to be some
improvements pretty rapidly. Is there anything about the standardization process, Mike, that is
perhaps different than you expected? Is there any learning process so far?
Williamson: There have been a lot of things that I've learned, having The Open Group come
along and take a lead on all of this and developing the standards. The Navy and the Department
of Defense (DoD) aren't real good at developing standards ourselves. We've tried to do it in the
past and we've failed miserably with some of the attempts that we have had. Having The Open
Group come and join us, and then bringing industry in, was the right thing to do.
Having this consortium with industry, Navy, Army, and Air Force acquisition teams, and fleet
participation, has been the right way to go. It’s the only way we can really define the standards
and get in place the standards that we really need to get at, with all those inputs coming together.
Gardner: We've been discussing a new military aircraft systems interoperability effort and
consortium, the Future Airborne Capability Environment or FACE effort, and how it promises to
improve costs, spur upgrades, flexibility, and accelerate avionics components' development
agility.
I'd like to thank our guests. We've been joined by David Lounsbury, Vice President of
Collaboration Services at The Open Group. Thanks, Dave.
Lounsbury: Thank you, Dana.
Gardner: And, we've been joined by Mike Williamson, Deputy Program Manager for Mission
Systems, with the Navy’s Air Combat Electronics Program Office. Thank you.
Williamson: Thank you, Dana.
Gardner: This sponsored podcast discussion is coming to you from The Open Group
Conference in Boston. We are here the week of July 19, 2010.

6. This is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. You've been listening to a
sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast. Thanks for joining, and come back next time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor:
The Open Group
Transcript of a sponsored podcast discussion on the military's work with The Open Group to
develop a computing environment that will smooth cost and schedule issues for new systems.
Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2010. All rights reserved.
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