CMOSS - C4ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards

Supporting the U.S. Army’s C4ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS)

The U.S. Army has defined a suite of open architecture industry and US Army standards to enable the reduction of C4ISR system size, weight and power (SWaP) and ensure commonality across multiple platforms by enabling the sharing of hardware and software components. The C4ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS), led by the US Army Material Command (Research, Development and Engineering Command) Communications-Electronics Center (CERDEC) will help drive momentum in the embedded industry away from costly, complex proprietary solutions and towards COTS-based open architectures.

The Benefits of CMOSS

The widespread adoption of CMOSS by system integrators in the US, as well as “Five Eyes” and other NATO nations, will help move the implementation of C4ISR capabilities away from the use of costly and complex “stovepiped” separate “boxes” on individual platforms. The use of true open standards will make it easier and more cost-effective to upgrade capabilities or keep pace with commercial technology by eliminating complex integration challenges, lack of competition, and proprietary interfaces. In many cases stovepiped systems consume more SWaP than is currently available, thus necessitating expensive and time-consuming vehicle modifications.

Curtiss-Wright and CMOSS

Curtiss-Wright is well positioned to support CERDEC’s efforts with multiple existing product lines already designed in compliance with CMOSS standards, as well as new technologies currently in development, that align with its objectives, including COTS-based rugged single board computers, Ethernet switches, TrustedCOTS™ trusted computing approaches, radial clock modules, data storage systems and power supplies. In support of CMOSS, Curtiss-Wright is working with CERDEC to define and mature the CMOSS standards by developing reference implementations within the converged architecture.

CMOSS Standards:

The open standards currently included in CMOSS include:

• Vehicular Integration for C4ISR/EW Interoperability (VICTORY): provides network based interoperability using to share services such as Time and Position.
• OpenVPX: a hardware form factor for fielding capabilities as cards in a common chassis
• Modular Open RF Architecture (MORA): drives functional decomposition to share resources such as antennas and amplifiers
• Software frameworks: includes REDHAWK, Software Communications Architecture (SCA), and Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) to enable software portability