It is Time for Army Aviation to Move to a Development Assurance Approach for Including Open Integrated Modular Avionics
Authors:   Georgia Institute of Technology, Daniel Dr. ,   Tennessee Technical Test Team, Lewis Dr. 
Published: July 2023

In the early days of quality management, prior to 1980s, the focus seemed to be on "Quality Control" or "Quality Assurance". Emphasis was placed on inspection and testing. Quality was about conformance to specification. Non-Conformance Reports were representative of quality control. Our understanding of quality management has evolved, largely based on the Toyota Quality and Concurrent Engineering Approach of moving it off the production line for Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD) [1]. In the late 1980s industry experienced similar difficulties in understanding and adopting quality management. The ideas behind managing quality are quite abstract. Quality is primarily about understanding and satisfying a customer's expectations. This includes implicit expectations, as well as explicit expectations. The techniques of specification, inspection and testing only make sense in that wider context. Formal risk management was developed in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Risk management principles are now widely understood and applied. Functional Safety Management (FSM) simply applies quality management to systems that are designed to control risk. [2] The standards for FSM and Development Assurance (DA) are relatively new. SAE ARP 4754 and ARP 4761 for complex aircraft systems were introduced in 1996 and DO-178 for software in 1998. In 2010 ARP 4754A [3] was created for movement from federated avionics systems to distributed integrated avionics systems which set the stage for Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) in DO 297 [4].
The Army identified IMA as a critical technology in its Joint Common Architecture (JCA) Final Report [5] and is seeking to provide a Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) approach to its Future Vertical Lift (FVL) programs. [6] The aim is to build and upgrade FVL mission systems without expensive proprietary interfaces. New capabilities from a choice of developers will adapt to emerging threats. The mission system architecture demonstration (MSAD) Program has awarded six contracts to avionics vendors to develop MOSA tools and rules. A capstone demonstration wraps-up this December 2020 and will generate a final report and provide guidance for Future Attack and Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), FLRAA and FUAS architectures. MOSA flexibility and economy come to legacy helicopters with the Aviation Mission Common Server (AMCS), which transitions the legacy fleet from single-purpose/single-vendor architectures to more adaptable modules and components. Nonproprietary, government-controlled, open system standards interface new software applications without going to each platform maker for integration. [6]
This paper will review FSM, DA, and Open IMA in these civil aircraft standards, compare them with Army Aviation's current Army Military Airworthiness Certification Criteria (AMACC) [7] and recommend a Civil Military FSM DA Framework for FVL and on how AMACC could be modified for FVL Open Systems Architectures (OSA) Certification using a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA). [8]