I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a senior DoD leader hold up their smartphone1 and wonder aloud why their military systems can’t work as seamlessly.
The answer is simple: There is no market that incentivizes companies to build seamless products for the military. Androids and iPhones work so well because there is competition. If Facebook Messenger2 starts releasing buggy versions, users will uninstall it and switch to Signal or Telegram or Snapchat or dozens of other messaging apps with various capabilities. Conversely, if a developer creates a fantastic new app that disrupts the incumbents, everyone will quickly switch to it. This forces the entire industry to continually innovate3.
Apple and Google are also in competition, thus it’s in their interests to foster ecosystems of hardware and software developers that in turn build and maintain market share for their products. The market results in the success or failure of the companies in that ecosystem and that competition results in excellent consumer technologies.
Good enough for government work
The US defense industry is not a competitive market, at least not in the same way4. Incentives across the military-industrial complex are misaligned and our nation’s security suffers for it. Even when everyone involved has the best of intentions, military prime contractors only win projects when they’re just cheap enough, just fast enough, and just good enough.
We joke that it’s “good enough for government work”, but the warfighter and the taxpayer deserve better.
Open architectures
The solution is relatively simple, at least in theory: the government needs to support the creation and enforcement of modular open system architecture (MOSA) standards for every aspect of the battlefield. We have a model for this already: Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) is an open software standard and certification process for military helicopters developed as a consortium between government acquisition agencies and major prime contractors. FACE has many benefits:
- Software reuse across platforms: Solutions developed for one platform can be reused on all compliant platforms, with no or few changes
- Plug-and-play: Systems can be easily reconfigured for different mission sets
- Speed and reliability: Developers can easily understand the interfaces and capabilities and automated compliance checking ensures the delivered solutions will work
- Competition: Anyone can develop to the published standards and offer competing products
- Sustainment: If a supplier goes out of business, their components can be replaced easily without being hampered by proprietary interfaces
- Upgradability: Software updates can be released faster and with less risk, as long as compliance checks are passed
All of this adds up to cost and schedule savings as well as the potential for more capable solutions. In addition to being an effective approach, FACE serves as a case study for other acquisition organizations on how to develop their own open standards and enforcement, which is helpful now that federal law requires the DoD to use MOSAs in systems development.
Future vision: There’s an app for that
I’m excited for the ecosystem that this surge will create. I imagine a future where warfighters choose what apps to use from an available library, just like an app store. Instead of program offices acquiring specific technologies, MOSAs will enable them to open up the competition and allow multiple vendors to make approved apps available, and then pay them proportionally by hours of use. This is better for the warfighter as they’ll be able to choose the solution that works best for their needs and mission. This is better for the government as they’ll offload development risk and funding. And this is better for innovative developers who truly care about delivering the best solutions, who will be financially rewarded for creating the best solutions.
That’s a big vision, and a lot has to change before we can get there, but it’s just one of the possibilities opening up as we push toward developing and adopting MOSAs. If you’re interested in learning more and becoming part of the conversation, a new community called MOSA Network was recently launched. Start here with a brief analysis of the Tri-Services Memo based on the new law:
What’s your vision for a MOSA-enabled future? How else can consumer technologies inspire better battlefield solutions? How will you engage in the MOSA network?
Footnotes:
- I think we just call them phones now, actually
- I think they want us to just call it Messenger now, actually
- The same goes for hardware, with reviews on Amazon and YouTube tech channels as indicators of a product’s effectiveness that drive (or drive away) sales
- The market is a monopsony with a byzantine set of regulations to participate and an oligopoly where a handful of large contractors wield outsized power