The Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) was designed as a response to the DoD aviation community’s need for a software computing environment designed to promote software product lines across different air platforms. Several components comprise the FACE approach to software re-use:
- Business processes to adjust DoD procurement and incentivize industry
- Development process support to promote development of re-usable software components
- A software computing environment standard to promote the development of portable components between differing aviation architectures
The FACE approach allows software-based “capabilities” to be developed as components that are exposed to other software components through defined interfaces. It also provides for the re-use of software across different hardware computing environments that contain differing platform devices.
The FACE Consortium was formed in 2010 to develop open standards to enable a common operating environment to support portable capability applications across DoD systems. The FACE Consortium enables industry-government collaboration in a trusted environment, using proven processes and governance of The Open Group.
The following three (3) documents, developed by the FACE Consortium, provide the definition and support of the FACE environment:
- The FACE Business Guide
- The FACE Reference Architecture (Standard)
- The FACE Reference Architecture Implementation Guide (future release)
The above documents are available by download from The Open Group website (www.opengroup.org/bookstore).
