NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The third annual Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) for Defense Summit, held April 8-9, brought together Tri-Service and industry leaders to advance open architecture priorities critical to warfighter success.
Moderated by Hon. Nickolas Guertin, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, Test and Engineering, the two-day forum addressed key topics such as lethality and resilience in missile and space domains, engineering realities of MOSA in aviation, leveraging MOSA for next-generation vehicles, and the challenges of reconciling intellectual property models with open architecture.
Col. David Liu, Senior Material Leader from the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, provided an overview of how MOSA is enhancing air superiority. He emphasized the Air Force’s collaboration with the Navy, Army and industry partners to prioritize speed, flexibility and rigorous execution—advancing innovative capabilities aligned with open standards.
Honorable Guertin, a long-time advocate for open standards, said, “The MOSA for Defense Summit showed how this initiative has gone from crawling to walking to jogging—not quite running and a ways from sprinting, as yet.”
He highlighted the work of The Open Group FACE Consortium as a leading example of successful open standards implementation.
A fireside chat between Guertin and Capt. Jarrod Hair, Program Manager for Air Combat Electronics Program Office (PMA-209), offered nearly 145 defense professionals insights into the evolution of open standards and the lessons learned that are accelerating today’s MOSA advancements.
“Sharing the stage with [Honorable] Nick Guertin was an honor, as his leadership established the groundwork for today’s momentum in MOSA adoption,” said Hair. “It’s been rewarding to continue driving that implementation at the execution level during my time at NAVAIR PMA-209.”
The PMA-209 Avionics Architecture Team showcased demonstrations and resources on software and hardware open systems standards, platform integration and modeling. They also provided guidance on business and technical open architecture strategies, as well as educational sessions on data architecture, implementation and open systems management.
A highlight of the summit was the team’s demonstration of a modular avionics chassis featuring a hybrid backplane that integrates both 3U OpenVPX and VNX+ standards. This open architecture design offers a flexible, cost-effective upgrade path for legacy systems, engineered for multi-level security and mission-specific configurations to ensure long-term sustainability.
The Avionics Architecture Team is comprised of subject matters experts well versed in technical standards such as: Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA®), Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE®), Hardware Open Systems Technologies (HOST), Open Mission Systems (OMS), C5ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS) – for Air, Ground and Sea Platforms.