Design and sustainment approach towards DoD electronic system common architectures

Department of Defense (DoD) electronic systems are deployed in a significant number of variants with hardware/software connectivity and interfaces that vary greatly from platform to platform. This inconsistency can be attributed to fundamental inherent differences in system `types', e.g. avionics, armament, or electronic warfare (EW), continued sustainment and need to prolong the life of critical platforms that consist of legacy systems, and development and deployment of newer platforms that take advantage of current technologies to provide state of the art system functionality. This paper will present considerations for a conceptual path forward in developing common system architectures via the definition and deployment of universal or interoperable interfaces and hardware. To facilitate a narrower focus and more realistically obtainable goal while addressing a functional area that has not been `formally' targeted until recently, common architectures applicable to United States Air Force (USAF) EW systems, specifically airborne electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems, will be addressed in this work.