Publication

Vehicle Electronics & Architecture (VEA)
2019

Potential for VICTORY and FACE™ Alignment – Initial Exploration of Data Interoperability and Standards Compliance / Conformance

by Leonard Elliott; Syltinsy P. Jenkins; Michael S. Moore; Howell S. Yee

Abstract

The Vehicular Integration for C4ISR/EW Interoperability (VICTORY) and Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Standards are two open standards that support Modular Open System Approaches (MOSA) to U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) weapon system development and acquisition. Both standards share similar high-level goals (e.g. interoperability, lower integration costs, and open competition). Due to differences in the business goals and application environments, the technical objectives were significantly different. The airborne avionics business and application space led the FACE™1 approach to define standards to make software portable and independent of the existing safetycritical and real-time system architectures in various airborne platforms. The FACE Technical Standard defines software application program interfaces and architectures for a flexible, operating environment to host platform independent software components. The ground vehicle environment led VICTORY to define standards to create interoperability where there was none previously. VICTORY defines standards for an in-vehicle network and on-the-wire network interfaces to integrate C4ISR/EW equipment and interface to vehicle systems. VICTORY and FACE define different kinds of standards because they had different objectives. This paper explores methods that could be used to integrate systems using the two standards, and suggests areas in which alignment is possible and may be mutually beneficial.