The plug and play concept for weapons systems development calls for the demonstration of interoperability at design time and puts a premium on a system that can exchange information and services with multiple systems.

The interoperability desired is reflected in both functional and non-functional qualities. So it needs to be evaluated in terms of functionality and data and quality of service concerns such as reliability, safety, and security. Evaluating how interoperable a system is rests on measuring the quality of interoperability.

Test and integration challenges, from the perspectives of the weapon and the platform it is to be integrated into include

• identify and provide relevant functions and data of components
• identify and observe resource, performance, and timing constraints
• do not change the platform software (for the aircraft or the application)

The Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) and the analysis plug-ins developed as part of the Open Source AADL Tool Environment (OSATE) offer architecture-centric, model-based answers for those challenges through

• modeling of embedded systems
• analysis for schedulability, scalability, safety, and end-to-end flow
• a focus on software components bound to hardware components on an execution platform

For its Weapons Management Systems, General Dynamics found that AADL use (pdf, 3.3 mb)—along with model-driven architecture—

• reduces development costs and system integration time
• simplifies communication among organizations addressing runtime quality attributes

Learn more about AADL and OSATE.