SUMMARY
The European Defence Agency study on a European Reference Open Architecture Standard for a modern Integrated Electronic Mission System in Military Land Vehicles (LAVOSAR II) follows on from EDA’s previous study on a Land Vehicle with Open System Architecture (LAVOSAR I). It seeks to investigate whether a new European reference in the area is necessary as recommended by the previous study.
Goals
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Definition of architectural domains that complement or contribute to other current activities in the area with particular focus on NATO Generic Vehicle Architecture (NGVA).
- Identification and definition of additional architectural layers to LAVOSAR.
- Estimation of benefits to be gained and the costs of implementation.
- Updates to the Open Reference Architecture Standards of LAVOSAR based on specific European requirements.
- Updates of the logistic procedures and operational workflows defined in the LAVOSAR study.
- Development of a roadmap to harmonise the data exchange procedure on modification, maintenance, repair and overhaul with military and civilian facilities among the different vehicle types in the European countries.
- Development of a roadmap that shows future development of NGVA and how LAVOSAR II activities can contribute to that development.
- Development of a roadmap for the establishment and through life management of a standard, including any toolkits required to maintain it.
ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION
LAVOSAR II is continuation of LAVOSAR I. Within LAVOSAR I, an Architecture Model for a Land Vehicle with Open Architecture for Mission Systems was developed and used to complement and support development of NATO Generic Vehicle Architecture (STANAG 4754).
LAVOSAR I influenced and is referred to in the NGVA Allied Engineering Publications (AEPs). The LAVOSAR II extends this model and provides further new areas for NGVA future developments including: UxV information exchange, Security, Logistics, Maintenance and Upgrading, Training and Data Exchange Mechanism.
The complete LAVOSAR Architecture Model has been formalised for the EDA Architecture Repository and has been provided as Enterprise Architect file and HTML-version.
LAVOSAR II carried out several workshops and issued two questionnaires to operational and logistics communities. The focus was on external information exchange requirements. It was highlighted that European nations currently do not express clear, formal requirements for information flow at the level of detail necessary to ensure interoperability of individual land vehicles either from an operational or from a logistics perspective. The operational community confirmed that traditional voice interfaces remain the highest priority for coordination among individual tactical units although current technical abilities permit the passing of information about almost any aspect of a mission system over a network.
In terms of architecture, several operational, system and technical views have been developed.
Two business cases for procurement of “New Vehicles” and the extended procurement of “Vehicles with additional updates” have been developed and studied. The savings are respectively 17% and 10% for the entire life cycle.
The study made several recommendations for future activities and projects. They include:
- Standardisation of software architecture.
- Improvements of the definitions of vehicles roles, user roles and higher level information exchange networks.
- Starting collaboration with teams responsible for “NATO Interoperability Standards & Profiles” (NISP), “Multilateral Interoperability Programme (MIP)” or NGVA in order to define more precise terminology of the mission system external environment.
- Development of the concept of the mission system being procured separately from the host vehicle.
- Gathering feedback on operational views from military users in order to refine and mature them.
- Improvements of standards recommended for use under technical views.
- Launching studies and demonstration projects to support through life capability gaps identified in the study, and
- Potential contributions to future developments of NGVA.
Due to the high number of recommendations for future activities, studies and projects CapTech Land members and the study team decided to conduct a workshop in order to define and agree way ahead. As an outcome of the workshop establishment of ad hoc programme called “LAnd Vehicle Open Systems Standardisation (LAVOSS) Study Programme” funded by pMS was agreed to continue activities recommended by the LAVOSAR II.