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Future Airborne Capability Environment
The Open Group Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE Consortium) was formed in 2010 to define an open avionics environment for all military airborne platform types. Today, it is a real-time software-focused professional group made up of industry suppliers, customers, academia, and users. The FACE approach is a government-industry software standard and business strategy for acquisition of affordable software systems that promotes innovation and rapid integration of portable capabilities across programs. The FACE Consortium provides a vendor-neutral forum for industry and government to work together to develop and consolidate the open standards, best practices, guidance documents, and business strategy necessary to result in:
The FACE Technical Standard is an open real-time standard for making safety-critical computing operations more robust, interoperable, portable and secure. Although the consortium started with a focus on avionics, the applicability of the technical standard and its associated data model have become much broader. The standard enables software developers to create and deploy a wide catalog of applications for use across the entire spectrum of real-time systems through a common operating environment. The latest edition of the standard further promotes application interoperability and portability with enhanced requirements for exchanging data among FACE components, including a formally specified data model, and emphasis on defining common language requirements for the standard.
Until 2022, individual members were required to be US persons. In 2022, the consortium moved to open membership to the countries of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Individuals can only become members if they are employed by a company that is a member.
Corporate membership is at different levels. The sponsor-level members are Boeing, Collins Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, US Air Force LCMC, and US Army PEO Aviation, and US Naval Air Systems Command.
The FACE effort sprang from US Navy open architecture programs, promoted by the US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), to enhance interoperability and software portability for avionics software applications across DoD aviation platforms. Both the US Army and US Air Force have been participating in the consortium. NAVAIR led the pack with early acquisitions, followed later by Army and Air Force.
The FACE Consortium was formed by The Open Group as a "Voluntary Consensus Standards Body", as defined by the National Technology Transfer Act and OMB Circular A-119. This facilitates government participation in the consortium. One goal of the effort is to reduce the typical development and deployment cycle of new capabilities in military airborne platforms from as long as six years under the current methodology to as little as six months.
The FACE reference architecture ecosystem includes software product conformance verification and certification processes. In October 2016, a suite of flight management software earned the first FACE certificate of conformance. One may view information on all certified FACE conformant products at the FACE Registry
The FACE technical approach tackles barriers to software modularity, portability, and interoperability by defining a Reference Architecture and employing design principles to enhance software portability. To meet the objectives of the technical approach, the FACE Technical Standard uses a standardized architecture describing a conceptual breakdown of functionality, called the FACE Reference Architecture, to promote the reuse of software components able to share common functionality across disparate systems. This architecture defines standardized interfaces to allow software components to be moved between systems, including those developed by different vendors. The standardized interfaces follow a data architecture to ensure the data communicated between the software components is fully described to facilitate their integration on new systems.
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Future Airborne Capability Environment
The Open Group Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE Consortium) was formed in 2010 to define an open avionics environment for all military airborne platform types. Today, it is a real-time software-focused professional group made up of industry suppliers, customers, academia, and users. The FACE approach is a government-industry software standard and business strategy for acquisition of affordable software systems that promotes innovation and rapid integration of portable capabilities across programs. The FACE Consortium provides a vendor-neutral forum for industry and government to work together to develop and consolidate the open standards, best practices, guidance documents, and business strategy necessary to result in:
The FACE Technical Standard is an open real-time standard for making safety-critical computing operations more robust, interoperable, portable and secure. Although the consortium started with a focus on avionics, the applicability of the technical standard and its associated data model have become much broader. The standard enables software developers to create and deploy a wide catalog of applications for use across the entire spectrum of real-time systems through a common operating environment. The latest edition of the standard further promotes application interoperability and portability with enhanced requirements for exchanging data among FACE components, including a formally specified data model, and emphasis on defining common language requirements for the standard.
Until 2022, individual members were required to be US persons. In 2022, the consortium moved to open membership to the countries of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Individuals can only become members if they are employed by a company that is a member.
Corporate membership is at different levels. The sponsor-level members are Boeing, Collins Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, US Air Force LCMC, and US Army PEO Aviation, and US Naval Air Systems Command.
The FACE effort sprang from US Navy open architecture programs, promoted by the US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), to enhance interoperability and software portability for avionics software applications across DoD aviation platforms. Both the US Army and US Air Force have been participating in the consortium. NAVAIR led the pack with early acquisitions, followed later by Army and Air Force.
The FACE Consortium was formed by The Open Group as a "Voluntary Consensus Standards Body", as defined by the National Technology Transfer Act and OMB Circular A-119. This facilitates government participation in the consortium. One goal of the effort is to reduce the typical development and deployment cycle of new capabilities in military airborne platforms from as long as six years under the current methodology to as little as six months.
The FACE reference architecture ecosystem includes software product conformance verification and certification processes. In October 2016, a suite of flight management software earned the first FACE certificate of conformance. One may view information on all certified FACE conformant products at the FACE Registry
The FACE technical approach tackles barriers to software modularity, portability, and interoperability by defining a Reference Architecture and employing design principles to enhance software portability. To meet the objectives of the technical approach, the FACE Technical Standard uses a standardized architecture describing a conceptual breakdown of functionality, called the FACE Reference Architecture, to promote the reuse of software components able to share common functionality across disparate systems. This architecture defines standardized interfaces to allow software components to be moved between systems, including those developed by different vendors. The standardized interfaces follow a data architecture to ensure the data communicated between the software components is fully described to facilitate their integration on new systems.