Raytheon Company says it is employing a service-oriented architecture framework to integrate weapons systems and sensors within its fleet of pilotless drones.
The Raytheon press release has an interesting definition to explain SOA, saying its SOA framework “is analogous to the hardware and operating system used by a tablet computer,” the company says. “A domain manager is analogous to a computer application.”
In this case, the framework provides the necessary infrastructure while the apps control the weapons, sensors, communications and other vital UAS mission-level functions. And it’s seen as providing a lot more flexibility to add or take out subsystems.
As Bob Francois, vice president of advanced missiles and unmanned systems for Raytheon Missile Systems, puts it:
“Raytheon’s SOA solution could make expensive rewrites of UAS proprietary software a thing of the past. Our open, service-oriented infrastructure can exist separately from the flight-critical software of the UAS. Raytheon’s system is plug and play, non-proprietary and platform independent.”
Raytheon’s SOA framework resides on a computing platform sized to fit within the available space on a wide variety of unmanned aircraft. Raytheon has completed development of an effects domain manager for sensor and weapon integration and is creating other domain managers for key UAS functions.
David Wichner of the Arizona Daily Star provides some additional details on Raytheon’s SOA strategy, noting that the flexible architecture would save the US government money, since services could be built into common interfaces. “The government would essentially own the interfaces and provide open access to developers.”
(Photo Credit: US Navy.)
Joe McKendrick is an author, consultant and speaker specializing in trends and developments shaping the technology industry.
Disclosure
Joe McKendrick
Joe McKendrick is an independent consultant, editor and speaker.
Joe has performed project work (white papers, articles, blogs, research and presentations) for the following companies in the IT marketspace:
- CBS Interactive/CNET/ZDNet (this blog)
- ebizQ
- Evans Data
- Gartner
- IBM
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- IDC
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Joe has also performed research work for the following sponsoring organizations in partnership with Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc.
- IBM
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Biography
Joe McKendrick
Joe McKendrick is an author and independent analyst who tracks the impact of information technology on management and markets. Joe is co-author, along with 16 leading industry leaders and thinkers, of the SOA Manifesto, which outlines the values and guiding principles of service orientation. He also speaks frequently on Enterprise 2.0 and SOA topics at industry events and Webcasts, and serves on the program committee for this year's SOA & Cloud Symposium in London. As an independent analyst, he has also authored numerous research reports in partnership with Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc. for user groups such as SHARE, Oracle Applications Users Group, and International DB2 Users Group. In a previous life, Joe served as director of the Administrative Management Society (AMS), an international professional association dedicated to advancing knowledge within the IT and business management fields. He is a graduate of Temple University.
