AEROSPACE, MILITARY & DEFENCE
Why winning a MOSA advantage starts with cultural change
Alicia Taylor, The Open Group FACE Consortium Director T
he case for Modular Open Systems Approaches (MOSA) in military airborne a simple but unavoidable reality: the environment in which defence capability is delivered is changing faster than the systems designed to operate within it. That growing disconnect - between the pace of change and the pace of adaptation - is now one programmes.
Airborne platforms have historically been architected to deliver exceptional performance, which ensures longevity. That approach has enabled decades of operational success, but it has also produced systems optimised for stability rather than change. In an era where relevance depends on continuous upgrade and responsiveness, that rigidity has increasingly become a constraint.
What MOSA actually enables At a technical level, MOSA addresses this challenge by allowing systems to be decomposed into self-contained functional interfaces. In theory - and increasingly in practice - this approach allows capability to be upgraded, or even introduced, without destabilising the overall platform. For airborne systems, where integration risk and schedule uncertainty often dominate upgrade timelines, this matters. Modular architectures can materially improve change across a platform’s lifecycle. But these advantages are not automatic. They only emerge when modularity is embedded deliberately and consistently.
Why architecture alone is not enough
The assumption that MOSA is primarily an engineering challenge is where many programs stall. Traditionally, modular designs rely heavily on interoperability and having a predictable integration pathway - all of which depend as much on organisational behaviour as on technical choices.
Procurement models, governance structures, contracting incentives and
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supplier relationships all shape whether a modular system can actually evolve at pace. If programmes are structured to reward tightly coupled, closed-source over reuse, or to minimise near-term risk at the expense of long-term adaptability, the theoretical circumstances, modularity exists on paper but delivers little operational value.
Open standards as a shared language
This is where open standards play a critical establishing common expectations across organisational boundaries. Open standards reduce ambiguity in how systems are integrated, conformance demonstrated and change managed over time.
Their deeper value is cultural. They provide a shared language for engineers, integrators, programme managers and suppliers to think logically about compatibility and evolution. When that language is consistently applied, collaboration becomes easier, upgrade cycles shorten and integration risk decreases.
MOSA as a discipline, not a prescription
is that it does not prescribe answers (or
APRIL 2026 | ELECTRONICS FOR ENGINEERS
openness enables competition and where it adds complexity.
Those judgements are unavoidably contextual, especially in safety-critical airborne systems. As a result, MOSA compliance is not a one-time achievement but an ongoing discipline
Environment enablement
This brings the discussion back to culture. The environments in which MOSA succeeds are those where change is expected, reuse is encouraged and long-term adaptability is valued alongside near-term delivery. Organisations that invest ahead of programme execution - by developing shared standards, building architectural the ecosystem - are better positioned to absorb change without disruption. Those that delay this work often discover that technical openness is constrained by organisational closure.
For airborne systems expected to remain operational for decades in an increasingly dynamic environment, MOSA is not an optional architectural preference. It is a necessary response to how capability must now evolve. But the true MOSA advantage it emerges when culture, process and technology are aligned to make change not just possible, but routine.
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