The Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development, and Engineering Center (CERDEC) is pushing hard to build momentum for its C4ISR-EW Hardware/Software Convergence Initiative. The new effort is designed to provide an enterprise architecture for a wide range of mobile technologies and rapid upgrades in the theater.
"We've developed a uniform open-system architecture that will allow fast and flexible hardware and software upgrades at the tactical edge by simply replacing a capability processing card," said Benjamin Peddicord, chief of the intelligence, technology, and architecture branch of CERDEC's Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate (I2WD). "Not only will this will eliminate the number of boxes on platforms, it reduces redundant [government-off-the-shelf technology] and it saves time, money, and other logistical burdens associated with retrofits back at depots." Updates will be transparent and soldier training will be simplified, Peddicord added. "In short, it will ensure that our forces are agile in every sense of the word," he said.
The HW/SW Convergence Initiative is designed to support Army sustainment and readiness as well as other DoD initiatives, such as Better Buying Power 3.0 and the Modular Open Standards Architecture (MOSA). "As such, it will benefit the Army's acquisition community and industry," Peddicord noted. "The Army will no longer be tied to a specific vendor, so it can acquire and plug in the best solution available at the time so we can outpace our adversaries."
The initiative's open system architecture also aims make it easier for industry to do business with the Army, as well as level the playing field for small businesses.
"Moreover, we're working with the Navy and Air Force, so industry should be seeing a common set of standards being advocated for across DoD," Peddicord said.
Adapting to changes
"Threat environments change; our needs change," Peddicord said. "We don't know what our needs will be in the future, and it's not likely that any single vendor actually has all of the best capabilities that we want, so we need a system that allows a third party to come in and let us respond to an environment we didn't expect."
The Army believes that the HW/SW Convergence Initiative will encourage the development of innovative technologies. "It allows our industry partners to bring special new technologies to an existing platform without having to re-architect the whole platform," Peddicord said. "So if one of our industry partners has a new, innovative solution that can solve an Army problem, rather than having to rebuild the entire platform they can insert their new piece of hardware or software — or both — into the existing architecture, leverage what's already there, and just add the pieces they need to rapidly address needs that may come up."
The HW/SW Convergence Initiative is also being developed to substantially increase the number common components shared between platforms and applications, helping to reduce the current logistical footprint.
"It will allow a lot more commonality between platforms," Peddicord said.
The new approach is also being designed to accommodate a wide range of mobile technologies.
"We would expect that different platforms would have different size chassis and different numbers of chassis," Peddicord said. "The size and shape of the chassis itself would be dependent on both the capabilities that you wanted to install in the platform and also the size constraints and shapes of the platform."
The chassis design will be highly adaptable and accommodating, Peddicord noted.
"If in the future you need to add an ability and it won't fit in an existing chassis, you can add a chassis and the new capabilities will still have access to all the information that was available on the original chassis," Peddicord said. "So you can scale the capabilities, essentially arbitrarily, and you still retain access to all of this information and the processing elements that are exposed."
CERDEC expects that the HW/SW Convergence Initiative to lead to significant size, weight and power (SWAP) benefits by consolidating the number of boxes deployed to the tactical edge and by encouraging suppliers to embrace more efficient design practices.
"There is potential opportunity for SWAP reduction, for example, through moving from cabled connected components to cards and a backplane, eliminating those heavy cables," said Jason Dirner, architecture team lead at the intelligence, technology and architecture branch of CERDEC's I2WD. "You can view multiple chassis as a single, logical chassis to take advantage of space available on the platform in a most efficient manner possible."
"Even more important than the substantial SWAP savings is the ability for us to adapt to an uncertain future," Peddicord observed. "We have lots of small companies that we work with, and they've proven over the last decade or two that they have the capability to produce technical solutions that the soldier needs rapidly, but we don't have the capability to drop those solutions in [to an existing system]." The HW/SW Convergence Initiative, however, potentially allows a small player with very deep and narrow expertise to augment existing systems without having to build an entire integrated system.
Peddicord expects that HW/SW convergence will also make training simpler and faster. "It is possible for a coherent, unified, user interface to be developed that provides a much easier to use environment for the end user," he observed. "From a single, common interface, users can access all of the capabilities on the platform."
Biggest obstacle
Peddicord views existing Army management practices as the biggest obstacle to the rapid, successful deployment of converged technologies.
"[Convergence] is difficult to manage, from the Army's perspective, because it's different from what it's used to doing," he said. "Yet, if we want different results, we have to do things differently."
Peddicord noted that the Army current writes system requirements in a unique, stovepipe way.
"They are written to address one specific problem, and it's hard to derive unified system requirements from that," he said. "If we write a requirement that says we need a new radio, and that's written in isolation without thinking about the way we want the whole system to work, it's hard to get an overall system design and overall platform with all of its integrated equipment optimized."
Peddicord said that the HW/SW convergence Initiative is high priority for CERDEC. "We will continue to work with industry and to support programs of record throughout the implementation, transition and acquisition process," he said.
