Publication

Our work in RT-163 was motivated by means by which the DoD can develop systems to exploit modularity to enhance defense acquisitions and military capabilities. The work centered on exploring the status quo on current practices in modularity and openness and explored the concept of a “MOSA ecosystem” that facilitates the adoption of strategies to achieve the desired benefits from a MOSA approach. The work investigated how to encourage modularity and openness, through researching relevant enablers across a range of areas of application. Our team adopted a multi-pronged “knowledge acquisition” approach to achieve our research objectives, involving 1) a deep dive literature review, 2) conducting detailed collaborative exchanges with key subject matter experts, and 3) hosting a workshop with attendees from academia, industry and government. Our work results in a preliminary guidance document that contains useful artifacts for program managers and acquisitions practitioners related to achieving the benefits of modularity and in context of the ‘ecosystem’. We have further documented a portion of our work in the form of a draft journal publication processing through the final stages at the time of this report.