The Modular Open Standards Approach

PHOTOS COURTESY OF AIMLOCK

Putting innovative technologies into the hands of warfighters on the battlefield hasn’t always been easy. Threats evolve rapidly, while defense procurement has been long-winded, with slow, inflexible processes, meaning it was difficult to field new technologies. On the flip side, defense technology innovators have also been developing solutions government procurement can’t adopt quickly, making modernizing the battlefield much more complicated. The Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) was built to address this, ensuring new technologies are modular and interoperable with technologies from different vendors and even different eras, across software and hardware.

Previously, systems had been locked to one vendor and their software and were hugely expensive to overhaul and maintain. In the age of the autonomous battlefield, MOSA is a fundamental and much-needed change to this unsustainable, inefficient situation. Instead, it aims to address the historical problems of defense procurement and put crucial new technologies into the hands of warfighters faster.

MOSA was adopted after the House Armed Services Committee stated in 2017 the conventional Department of Defense (DOD) acquisition system was “not sufficiently agile to support warfighter demands.” The switch to standardized, modular components seeks to drive cost efficiency in the sector and to rapidly adopt effective new technologies.

In December 2025, the DOD reaffirmed its commitment to MOSA, with a new memo (signed by the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force) stating MOSA should be implemented to “facilitate rapid transition and sharing of advanced warfighting capability to keep pace with the dynamic warfighting threat.”

MOSA isn’t without its critics, and reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have suggested the way it’s been implemented by the DOD thus far has failed to deliver some of MOSA’s potential benefits. Some MOSA programs haven’t conducted cost-benefit analyses, and thus failed to deliver innovation, interoperability, and lower prices, the GAO Weapon Systems Annual Assessment found. It also expanded on how weapons systems can take an average of 10 years (five years for rapid prototyping, followed by five years for further development) to get into the hands of warfighters.

Why MOSA matters

MOSA’s history stretches back almost 20 years, but it was enshrined in federal law and a memo from the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force in 2019. A key part of its impact is interoperability, ensuring new weapons systems can integrate plug-and-play components, offering the agility to keep pace with the demands of soldiers on the battlefield.

Getting more granular, MOSA can address long-standing challenges posed by a legacy process that, while a useful approach for assessing military capability needs, has often acted as an innovation bottleneck: the DOTmLPF-P (Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership, Personnel, Facilities, and Policy) framework. DOTmLPF-P is particularly cumbersome when technical advancements are belabored due to organizational hurdles. However, the modularity of MOSA is the solution to this, as it allows for agile, incremental upgrades that can bypass wholesale changes across all seven domains of DOTmLPF-P.

MOSA isn’t some abstract concept nor are its benefits. It’s already been implemented, for example, in the C4ISR/Electronic Warfare Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS), converging capabilities such as mission command and movement and maneuver into one system within vehicles, rather than multiple boxes. The Air Force's Open Mission Systems (OMS) also ensure weapon systems, sensors, and subsystems can interact and communicate using common data formats, ensuring OMS-capable components can be integrated and tested at less cost.

Obstacles in the road

While MOSA offers clear advantages in dealing with procurement and innovation roadblocks, there are still challenges in implementing it. Coordinating contractors, vendors, and departments is challenging, with significant resistance to change. Military procurement is still built around large programs, and shifting to a modular approach requires a new way of thinking.

MOSA at its best

Perhaps the best way to illustrate how MOSA can thrive is by looking at a real-world example that’s succeeding. The Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE), developed by The Open Group, is a wonderful case study to point to, especially when it comes to standardization. FACE has uplifted MOSA principles by establishing a common operating environment and a set of open standards enabling software components to be reused across different airborne platforms. By way of promoting vendor-neutral, government-defined interfaces, the initiative has empowered suppliers to build to a clear, unified specification. The end result? A dramatic reduction in integration costs and time-to-field.

When looking at the FACE model, it’s hard to see why MOSA’s been approached in any other way.

A clear-eyed approach

Implementing MOSA correctly so warfighters can truly reap the benefits requires “careful planning and coordination” according to the DOD’s report, Implementing a Modular Open Systems Approach in DOD Programs.

As highlighted by the success of FACE, planning is vital to achieving success with MOSA.

At the planning stage, leaders should work to establish measurable goals relating to the benefits of MOSA: Is the system more flexible? Does it enable rapid integration of new technologies? Does it reduce life-cycle costs?

For any MOSA project, a clear interoperability plan is the first stage. Working together with industry is also crucial: vendors who develop genuinely modular, open-standard components should be rewarded. To address lingering problems around timescales, MOSA projects should also target specific mission areas first, assess their success against measurable goals, and only then roll out system-wide changes. It’s also key that any MOSA team is filled with skilled integrators to ensure technology is genuinely interoperable. This may require reorganization, hiring or reskilling, but the benefits of doing MOSA right make it well worth the effort.

Doing MOSA right

Implementing MOSA isn’t without its challenges, with timescales today still lagging behind what MOSA can potentially deliver over the longer term. But the approach is vital to modernizing the way the U.S. military puts technology in the hands of fighters on the battlefield, with proven benefits in everything from cost efficiency to interoperability. The recent reaffirmation of DOD support for MOSA is a clear indication such tangible benefits are clearly recognized and valued.

To avoid analysis paralysis in the pursuit of a single perfect standard covering all use cases, senior military leaders should consider identifying a subset of services that can adopt a common architecture and move forward together with a common understanding.

What’s the largest group that can practically share one standard? Is it a function they can all share (for example, all weapon systems, all boats, all helicopters), or at a lower, service-specific level (such as an Army weapons standard)? By defining the largest group of stakeholders who can realistically align on one architecture, leaders can ensure progress without stalling under the weight of endless debate.

Doing MOSA right will require close partnerships between the government and the private sector, with careful planning and new thinking around how such technologies are trialed and rolled out. By doing so, MOSA can ensure technologies are delivered to warfighters faster, more efficiently, and cost-effectively, enabling our military to keep pace with ever-evolving challenges around the world.

About the author: Bryan Bockmon is the CEO of AimLock, a company that develops autonomous systems for defense applications.