Part 1: The Foundation – What Is MOSA and Why It Matters for Readiness

Modern defense systems have to evolve as quickly as the threats they face. Traditional, closed architectures often fall behind, creating delays, high costs, and dependency on single vendors. A Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) offers a better path.

By encouraging interoperability and competition, it gives defense programs the freedom to adapt and modernize at mission speed. This article explains what MOSA is and why it has become essential for military defense readiness.

What Is MOSA?

While “Modular Open Systems Architecture” is often used to describe the technical structure, the official term used by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), where this approach is mandated by the US Congress in Title 10 U.S.C, is the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA).

MOSA is built on two primary technical concepts:

• Modular Design: This separates a system into highly cohesive, loosely coupled, and severable components or modules. Think of it as a “plug-and-play” system. These modules perform distinct functions and can be added, removed, or replaced individually without having to rework the entire system.
• Open Systems: This requires the use of widely supported, consensus-based, and publicly available open standards for the interfaces between the modules. This ensures different components from various vendors can seamlessly work together, defined as interoperability.

What Are the Benefits of MOSA?

The primary goal of MOSA is to move away from expensive, proprietary, or “vendor-locked” systems that are difficult and costly to upgrade. Key benefits of MOSA include:

• Affordability: Lowers life-cycle costs through competition among suppliers for components and by allowing incremental, selective upgrades rather than full system replacements.
• Adaptability and Technology Refresh: Facilitates the rapid integration of new technologies, components, and capabilities to counter emerging threats, extending the system’s operational life.
• Competition and Innovation: Enables small and specialized companies to compete on developing specific modules, expanding the available supplier base.
• Interoperability: Ensures that systems and components across different platforms and services can communicate and work together effectively.

The Five MOSA Principles

To achieve these benefits, the DoD mandates adherence to five core principles for programs implementing MOSA:

1. Establish an Enabling Environment: Create the necessary business, contracting, and technical support framework.
2. Employ Modular Design: Design the system architecture with highly cohesive and loosely coupled modules.
3. Designate Key Interfaces: Identify the critical, stable interfaces between modules.
4. Use Open Standards: Select and use widely supported, open standards for the designated key interfaces.
5. Certify Conformance: Verify and validate that the components and their interfaces comply with the selected open standards.

What Is MOSA Used For?

There are a number of real-world examples of MOSA-related standards. Several defense-focused standards have been developed under the MOSA concept to define specific open architectures:

• SOSA (Sensor Open Systems Architecture): Guidelines for C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) systems, focusing on sensors and processing hardware.
• FACE (Future Airborne Capability Environment): An open avionics standard for software portability across aircraft systems.
• CMOSS (C5ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards): A hardware and software standard suite for ground vehicles and other platforms.

Open Architecture Standards at New Wave Design

New Wave Design is an active participant in a number of open architecture standards, including SOSA. We’ve developed a dedicated page to explain these important standards and their benefits to the aerospace and defense market, and most importantly, to the Warfighter.

Module-level processing solutions, such as the V6065 3U VPX Versal® Premium ASoC FPGA Optical I/O Module with XMC Site, are excellent examples of products that align with these standards and provide an integrator with an ability to drive open systems, such as SOSA-defined slot profiles. If you’d like to learn more, contact our team today.