In combat and tactical vehicles, soldiers can access communications systems that display a complete picture of the battlefield. However, these high-tech situational awareness features are viewed through different computer systems, over separate monitors and with little room to spare.
Now the US Army is looking to replace that “swivel chair” approach to situational awareness by introducing a standardized family of tactical computers that are scalable and tailorable to the mission and vehicle. With a modular “build-your-own-system” computer, users will be able to access and operate several different software applications over a single piece of computer hardware.
Known as the Mounted Family of Computer Systems, or MFoCS, the new capability will bring interoperability to tactical computers and improve the soldier experience by allowing them to better plan, monitor and execute missions.
The building block approach introduces three MFoCS models: the basic, intermediate and advanced. The basic configuration is a tablet, while the intermediate model adds a processing unit with a 12, 15 or 17 inch display. The advanced model includes not only the tablet but also two intermediate units for a total of three work stations, making the three MFoCS models interchangeable and easily customized to fit any mission. The tablets are ruggedized and operate on a 25-foot cable so Soldiers inside a vehicle can pass the display around or even detach it and take it outside.
“By offering basic through advanced computing and display capabilities, we can satisfy the needs of several mission command applications while eliminating the burden of operating different computers in the same vehicle,” said Dominic Satili, deputy product manager for Blue Force Tracking, assigned to Project Manager Joint Battle Command-Platform, or PM JBC-P. “The Soldier only has to learn how to operate one computer.”
Designed to run JBC-P, the Army’s primary situational awareness capability, the system will also support other command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance applications and provide mounted computing solutions for the Marine Corps.
By allowing multiple software programs to utilize a single hardware solution inside the vehicle-rather than requiring individual hardware-it also reduces size, weight and power demands. MFoCS not only brings interoperability to tactical computers, it also reduces the cost of the basic configuration computer by as much as 36 percent and boosts its performance by more than 350 percent.
Development of M-FoCS dates back to a 2011 Army Directed Requirement for a common computing hardware solution with the goal of converging separate computing environments onto a single architecture.
MFoCS will support PM JBC-P’s Mounted Computing Environment, or MCE, one of six computing environments that are part of the Army-wide Common Operating Environment, or COE. The COE strategy embraces a commercially-based set of standards that enable secure and interoperable applications to be rapidly developed and executed across the computing environments.
Once established, the COE will allow the Army to develop, test, certify and deploy software capabilities efficiently with reduced development costs, while also encouraging competition.
The first delivery of MFoCS computers, which will be used for integration and testing, is expected within 20 weeks of the contract date.
