Robert Otto, deputy chief of staff for ISR at the Air Force, has said that the branch is considering using an open ISR architecture to align the program with current spending requirements, Defense News reported Friday.
“The notion is we get away from a propriety, very hierarchical type of system to something that is government owned, open architecture with competitions for the various applications,” Otto told industry executives at an Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association-hosted event Friday.
Aaron Mehta writes that the service wants to apply that model to its Distributed Common Ground System that is built to gather data from multiple ISR platforms.
“It’s a tremendous architecture which can do incredibly powerful things that has delivered unbelievable success on the battlefield,†Otto added, according to Mehta’s report.
“It’s also completely unaffordable, and if we don’t change the way we do business we will fail.â€
During his speech, Otto noted that fiscal year 2013 sequester cuts have affected the branch’s U-2 Rivet Joint fleets of reconnaissance aircraft.
He also said the Air Force needs more flexibility to plan how it operates certain programs.
“What [sequestration] really means is we need to reform,†Otto told the forum audience. “We need the help of Congress in order to be able to reform the way that we do things going forward.â€
