Navy’s Plan for Modular Open Systems Streamlines Innovation

Editor’s Note: Jacob Glassman’s comments do not reflect the position of the Department of the Navy and are his own personal views.

The Department of the Navy is building out its Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) to speed up emerging technology adoption, rapidly prototype new solutions and replace aging legacy systems, Jacob Glassman, technical advisor to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition, explained during an interview with GovCIO Media & Research.

MOSA is the Defense Department’s preferred method for implementation of open systems. The services issued the first MOSA tri-service memo was in 2019, mandating all new programs and tech refreshes leverage the approach. The Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force signed the latest MOSA memo at the end of last year, reaffirming the services’ commitment to the strategy.

The newest memo states “MOSA shall be implemented and promulgated among the military services to facilitate rapid transition and sharing of advanced warfighting capability to keep pace with the dynamic warfighting threat.”

Navy’s MOSA 1.0 Targets Speed

The Navy’s first iteration of the MOSA implementation plan aims to spur innovation and boost interoperability, Glassman explained.

“It’s foundationally a process, procedure, fundamentals on how we do engineering,” Glassman told GovCIO Media & Research in a recent interview. “The whole idea is we need to be developing our combat systems to have a modular open system architecture instead of these very large monolithic architectures that only one provider can provide and also really muscles out innovation and small business.”

Interoperability between the Navy and the other services is a boon to the DOD’s CJADC2 mission and simplifies acquisition and modernization standards to ensure consistency across systems.

“Instead of the Navy building their truck — or organization A builds their 20-wheeler truck, and the Air Force brings a 16-wheeler truck — it’s like, ‘no, no, here are the standards,’” Glassman said.

Glassman said creating these standards opens the door for “multiple different people [to] innovate, propose new solutions [and] different modules.”

MOSA Boosts Solutions Sharing

He said MOSA allows exchange between services like the Army, Air Force and Navy to better share systems that work well, add emerging technologies as they develop and replace legacy technology as it becomes obsolete.

Glassman pointed to an example where the architectures of the MH-60 Seahawk, CH-47 Chinook and AH-64 Apache helicopters were unified through the use of the tri-service memo to commit each service to using MOSA for all their acquisition and development.

“If you have an electronic warfare module, or a navigation module, why shouldn’t we be able to share that amongst all of our helicopters? They have different missions, but it’s still a helicopter,” Glassman said. “If we were able to develop a module that can operate in a denied environment for Apache, why do we need to completely redesign all of that from scratch to make that work with MH 60?”

The Navy’s MOSA implementation plan is in its 1.0 phase, with plans to update the plan annually until it reaches a final version with 3.0.

“At the end of the day, we want to be a team here. That’s how it’s really going to work,” Glassman said.