DEFENSE AIRBORNE RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE

OPEN SYSTEMS DEPLOYMENT STATUS AND ASSESSMENT REPORT

INTRODUCTION

This document provides an assessment of the progress of open systems deployment for Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office (DARO) programs. The following programs are covered in this report:

• Airborne Reconnaissance Information Technical Architecture (ARITA);
  
• Common Imagery Ground/Surface Systems (CIGSS);
  
• Common Imagery Processor (CIP);
  
• Joint SIGINT Avionics Family (JSAF);
  
• Common Data Link (CDL); and
  
• Tactical Control System (TCS).

AIRBORNE RECONNAISSANCE INFORMATION TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE

With the draft release of the DARO Airborne Reconnaissance Information Technical Architecture (ARITA), an across-the-board information architecture for guiding the development and migration of all airborne reconnaissance systems is being introduced for the first time. DARO's first goal is to promote a high-level awareness of the ARITA across the Department of Defense (DoD), industry, and standards organizations and solicit their review and comments. DARO wants to ensure that DoD and the acquisition community fully understand the ARITA and its importance for building an integrated airborne reconnaissance architecture. Equally critical are DARO plans to develop stronger working relationships with industry and standards development bodies over the longer term and to align our underlying technology base with the free marketplace and technological industries.

With the continuing development and refinement of the ARITA, DARO will also prepare an airborne reconnaissance annex for the DoD Joint Technical Architecture (JTA), work to develop SIGINT ground/surface system standards (similar to CIGSS), prepare a MASINT standards handbook, and provide detailed standards for navigation, timing, and ancillary data.

COMMON IMAGERY GROUND/SURFACE SYSTEM

The Common Imagery Ground/Surface System (CIGSS) architecture is DARO's effort to migrate all airborne reconnaissance ground and surface systems to a common, interoperable baseline by FY98/99. The CIGSS Acquisition Standards Handbook defines an open systems architecture that requires all systems to:

The responsibility for the CIGGS Acquisition Standards Handbook will transition to NIMA after the publication of Version 2.0 of the handbook in April 1997. NIMA also will be responsible for the Imagery Product Libraries that will provide storage and dissemination of airborne imagery products. Responsibility for the Imagery Exploitation Support System (IESS) as well as the Direct Dissemination Program (DDS) will be assumed by NIMA. NIMA is responsible for the development of standards to provide interoperability of these systems within the CIGSS architecture.

The CIGSS architectural concept has been developed to ensure that imagery ground and surface systems are:

• scaleable to support JTF operations at all levels of conflict;
  
• tailorable to support Joint Force Component Commanders' unique needs, applications, and operating environments;
  
• consistent with DoD C4I standards and architectures; and
  
• interoperable with all current and future airborne reconnaissance platforms and sensors.
  

COMMON IMAGERY PROCESSOR

The DARO recently awarded the Common Imagery Processor (CIP) contract to Northrop Grumman (formerly Westinghouse). The CIP is the primary sensor processing element of the CIGSS architecture. The function of the CIP is to accept imagery data, process it into an exploitable image, and output it in a standard format to other CIGSS elements. The introduction of the CIP will allow any airborne reconnaissance ground system to receive imagery data from any sensor (SAR, EO, or IR) from the suite of DoD collection platforms, including the High Altitude Endurance UAVs. The objective is to implement a COTS-based software, hardware-independent solution instead of the traditional custom software, hardware-specific development efforts of the past.

JOINT SIGINT AVIONICS FAMILY

The Joint SIGINT Avionics Family (JSAF) program is an evolutionary acquisition to modernize airborne SIGINT systems to meet the technological advancements outlined in the NSA SIGINT 2010 Study. These upgrades feature an open systems approach with widely-used, non-proprietary standard interfaces and protocols that provide commonality, modularity, and reconfigurability. All aspects of the system interfaces are defined to facilitate new or additional system capabilities for a wide range of applications. The DARO Joint Airborne SIGINT Architecture (JASA) details the standards that guide JSAF efforts to provide the airborne SIGINT fleet with a fully open systems architecture by 2010.

The High Band Prototype (HBP) is the lead development in the JSAF evolutionary acquisition approach. It is currently undergoing factory integration and testing. Factory acceptance testing in January 1997 will be followed by the integration and flight test onboard an EP-3 during 1997. A three month operational deployment will occur in early 1998. HBP will lay the foundation for future JSAF developments by validating many aspects of the open system, digital approach outlined in the JASA Standards Handbook (JSH). The development uses a COTS host processor, the Motorola 603E PowerPC, to run industry standard VxWorks design software. Developers use widely accepted object-oriented design principles to reduce integration time of new processing applications. System software is written in C and C++, which are among the most widely-used higher order programming languages. The infrastructure design uses a key digital signal processing approach implemented on three standard networks that support open system design:

• Fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) message passing network;
  
• Fiber optic ring precision synchronization and reference network; and
  
• Fiber Channel dataflow network.

The entire HBP design is portable, running on a family of common, commercially-available VME processors.

The JSAF Low Band Subsystem (LBSS) is currently in competitive source selection with planned contract award in December 1996. The Statement of Objectives in the Request for Proposal requires an open architecture design that complies with JASA standards.

COMMON DATA LINK

Consistent with the objectives outlined in the Open Systems Architecture Deployment Plan, DARO is currently participating in an open systems architecture review of the Common Data Link (CDL) program. A review team comprised of representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and DARO is examining the CDL architecture as implemented by Service programs, as well as reviewing documented migration plans. The review objectives are to determine whether CDL systems could be partitioned into common functional modules, and migrated to an open systems architecture to increase commonality and reduce cost. The team expects to report its initial findings and recommendations by December 1996. The team will incorporate these recommendations into the upcoming Tactical CDL development activity. The Tactical CDL will provide an interoperable capability that meets the size, weight, and power constraints of smaller air vehicles such as the Outrider UAV. Cost effectiveness of the equipment is a primary design driver, and will be achieved through competition and insertion of COTS hardware.

TACTICAL CONTROL SYSTEM

The Tactical Control System (TCS) is an OSD initiative to provide joint warfighting commanders with interoperable and scaleable command, control, communications, and data dissemination systems for the family of tactical UAVs and receive and disseminate data for the High Altitude Endurance vehicles. Consistent with the Open Systems Architecture Deployment Plan, DARO and JPO are developing a TCS with sufficient open specifications for interfaces, services, and supporting formats. An objective of the TCS development is the use of common hardware and software already in DoD. The TCS architecture will be open and modular to support hosting functionality across a range of computer platforms. An additional program objective is to facilitate the integration of control functionality for a diversity of tactical UAVs. The employment of an open system architecture is necessary to fulfill the objective of TCS reconfigurability to support UAV missions to the joint services at multiple echelons (including tactical communications and data dissemination capabilities).

TCS will comply with applicable requirements from the Technical Architecture Framework for Information Management (TAFIM), JTA, ARITA, CIGGS Acquisition Standards Handbook, and the DII COE Baseline Specifications.

The TCS engineering team is currently developing requirements within the framework of program and system objectives identified by the TCS Program Manager. The team is analyzing the documents cited above and flowing their requirements into the TCS requirements package. The DII COE will be utilized as the TCS operating environment.

The TCS program will be implemented in two phases:

• Phase I (24 Months) is an incremental build that adds TCS functions and capabilities toward multi-UAV control. Phase I focuses on demonstrations to generate early user input and evaluations. In October 1996, letter contracts were awarded to General Atomics (the Predator prime contractor) and Alliant Techsystems (the Outrider prime contractor) to begin TCS software development.
  
• Phase II (duration TBD) will continue demonstrations and systems integration, and also include low-rate production.

CONCLUSION

DARO has been migrating airborne reconnaissance programs to an open systems paradigm since it's inception. In the DARO Objective Architecture, we stress the need for modular, flexible platform/sensor configurations, and for ground station scaleability and commonality. We can only meet these needs by embracing an open systems approach. As discussed in this document, DARO's programs are successfully continuing their progress towards an open systems architecture. We will continue to provide updates on our progress on a semi-annual basis.