FACE Architecture

The US Department of Defense continues to push for the use of open architecture solutions as a means to get better avionics hardware into the field more quickly and at a lower cost. One source of such solutions is the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) consortium, founded in 2010 to develop an open architecture technical standard as well as business models for implementing FACE standards in systems. The consortium is managed by the Open Group, and has members from government, education, and industry sectors.  Member organizations must be incorporated in the US and individual members must be US citizens, though the annual FACE Technical Interchange Meeting typically includes an exhibition that is open to all. There are currently 91 organizations and over 1,000 individuals with a membership. The consortium sponsors four general working sessions a year, called the FACE F2F.  Volunteer members do the detailed work of the consortium through technical and business working groups overseen by a steering committee and advisory board.

One of the most significant products of the FACE consortium has been the development of a technical standard, which is currently at revision 3.0  According to the FACE website, “The FACE Technical Standard is the open avionics standard for making military computing operations more robust, interoperable, portable and secure. The standard enables developers to create and deploy a wide catalog of applications for use across the entire spectrum of military aviation systems through a common operating environment.”