A battle management team of the U.S. Air Force has developed an open architecture for the service branch’s Distributed Common Ground System that works to support the service branch’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements.The Air Force said Thursday the team collaborated with the Air Combat Command and the Air Force Research Laboratory to support the now-underway transition into the new architecture.
“In order to support Combined Forces Air Component commander intelligence needs, Air Force DCGS must be able to conduct time-dominant and decision-quality analysis to optimize ISR operations, produce timely assessments and enhance battlespace awareness and threat warnings,” said Lt. Col. Joshua Williams, DCGS branch materiel leader for the Air Force.
Williams added his team worked to develop an open and “agile” architecture that is designed to support a “plug-and-play” type of environment.
Team members created, implemented and institutionalized open hardware, software processes and specifications for the new architecture within 42 weeks to help reduce analyst evaluation and decision times by approximately 60 percent, the Air Force noted.
The service branch added the open architecture is designed to provide a single consolidation of operator workflow to address intelligence storage as well as target identification time and execution.
The program has completed its risk reduction phase in December 2015 and pilots are currently being deployed to integrate the new structure in three Air Force DCGS sites.
The service branch expects to complete the piloting phase in 2017 with a development and operational test and eventually accommodate non-Air Force DCGS systems.
