The current combat software update process takes two years. VIStology proposes to develop a Semantic data Architecture for Future-proof Extensible integration (SAFE) approach that will leverage semantic technologies to allow adding and maintaining new components at runtime without affecting the legacy systems. Proposed semantically-rich protocols facilitate automating reasoning about the legacy and new components, which will make systems gracefully handle the addition of new components and data attributes, and to avoid undesirable side effects. Effectively, SAFE will enable capability upgrades at any time, regardless of the software version of the systems and components present on a ship. Instead of replacing entire software suite, individual modules of the combat management system can be deployed one at a time. To test the proposed approach, VIStology will work closely with its partner, which already provided a concrete use case that would drive the R&D effort in Phase I, but also be used to assess usability, correctness and efficiency of SAFE. This collaboration will guarantee that any product developed out of this effort will address real needs of its potential users, and that SAFE improves the efficiency and the quality of the acquisition of DoD systems.
Benefit: The main benefit to the warfighter will be timely availability of new capabilities in the combat systems, like Aegis, so that they can get immediate advantage over the enemy's modifications to their tactics and procedures. While the currently used Advanced Capability Build (ACB) process supports a two-year turn around for developing and deploying a new system, the proposed SAFE approach will allow for instant deployment of new components one by one, leading to the elimination of the deployment time to practically zero, while reducing the integration time with the rest of the system to minutes. The approach is analogous to incremental integration as opposed to the big-bang integration approach.
Keywords: component profiles, component profiles, microservices, Data architecture, integration automation, Software Integration, component ontologies, semantic technologies, Face
