FCS Overview

The Army’s Future Com­bat Sys­tems (FCS) net­work allows the FCS Fam­i­ly-of-Sys­tems (FoS) to oper­ate as a cohe­sive sys­tem-of-sys­tems where the whole of its capa­bil­i­ties is greater than the sum of its parts. As the key to the Army’s trans­for­ma­tion, the net­work, and its logis­tics and Embed­ded Train­ing (ET) sys­tems, enable the Future Force to employ rev­o­lu­tion­ary oper­a­tional and orga­ni­za­tion­al con­cepts. The net­work enables Sol­diers to per­ceive, com­pre­hend, shape, and dom­i­nate the future bat­tle­field at unprece­dent­ed lev­els as defined by the FCS Oper­a­tional Require­ments Doc­u­ment (ORD).

The FCS net­work con­sists of four over­ar­ch­ing build­ing blocks: Sys­tem-of-Sys­tems Com­mon Oper­at­ing Envi­ron­ment (SOSCOE); Bat­tle Com­mand (BC) soft­ware; com­mu­ni­ca­tions and com­put­ers (CC); and intel­li­gence, recon­nais­sance and sur­veil­lance (ISR) sys­tems. The four build­ing blocks syn­er­gis­ti­cal­ly inter­act enabling the Future Force to see first, under­stand first, act first and fin­ish deci­sive­ly.

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Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Com­put­ers (CC) Sys­tems

The FCS Fam­i­ly-of-Sys­tems (FoS) are con­nect­ed to the com­mand, con­trol, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, com­put­ers, intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance (C4ISR) net­work by a mul­ti­lay­ered Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Com­put­ers (CC) net­work with unprece­dent­ed range, capac­i­ty and depend­abil­i­ty. The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Com­put­ers (CC) net­work pro­vides secure, reli­able access to infor­ma­tion sources over extend­ed dis­tances and com­plex ter­rain. The net­work will sup­port advanced func­tion­al­i­ties such as inte­grat­ed net­work man­age­ment, infor­ma­tion assur­ance and infor­ma­tion dis­sem­i­na­tion man­age­ment to ensure dis­sem­i­na­tion of crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion among sen­sors, proces­sors and warfight­ers both with­in, and exter­nal to the FCS-equipped orga­ni­za­tion.

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Com­put­ers (CC) net­work does not rely on a large and sep­a­rate infra­struc­ture because it is pri­mar­i­ly embed­ded in the mobile plat­forms and moves with the com­bat for­ma­tions. This enables the com­mand, con­trol, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, com­put­ers, intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance, and recon­nais­sance (C4ISR) net­work to pro­vide supe­ri­or Bat­tle Com­mand (BC) on the move to achieve offen­sive-ori­ent­ed, high-tem­po oper­a­tions.

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Net­worked Logis­tics Sys­tems

The key to the suc­cess of the FCS is the Net­worked Logis­tics Sys­tems inte­grat­ed through the Fam­i­ly-of-Sys­tems (FOS) to achieve the logis­tics goals of reduc­ing the logis­tics foot­print, enhanc­ing deploy­a­bil­i­ty, increas­ing oper­a­tional avail­abil­i­ty, and reduc­ing total own­er­ship costs. These crit­i­cal pro­gram goals are includ­ed in the two logis­tics Key Per­for­mance Para­me­ters (KPP), KPP 4 (Transportability/Deployability) and KPP 5 (Sustainability/Reliability). Inher­ent to meet­ing these KPPs is the inte­gra­tion of logis­tics in the com­mand, con­trol, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, com­put­ers, intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance (C4ISR) net­work pri­mar­i­ly through the Plat­form-Sol­dier Mis­sion Readi­ness Sys­tem (PSMRS) and the Logis­tics Deci­sion Sup­port Sys­tem (LDSS). These sys­tems pro­vide unprece­dent­ed logis­tics infor­ma­tion and deci­sion tools to the com­man­ders and logis­ti­cians by enabling the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem to deliv­er the right stuff to the right place at the right time. The net­worked logis­tics is fur­ther enabled by the demand reduc­tion tech­nolo­gies designed into the Sys­tem of Sys­tems. Increased Reli­a­bil­i­ty Avail­abil­i­ty Main­tain­abil­i­ty — Test (RAM‑T) goals and imple­ment­ing a Per­for­mance Based Logis­tics (PBL) sup­port con­cept through exten­sive up front sys­tems engi­neer­ing efforts will result in increased Oper­a­tional Avail­abil­i­ty and sig­nif­i­cant decreas­es in both parts and main­te­nance per­son­nel while gen­er­at­ing increased com­bat pow­er for the Sol­diers.
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Lynux­Works Select­ed as Embed­ded Oper­at­ing Sys­tem Ven­dor for Army’s Future Com­bat Sys­tems Pro­gram
04/11/2005

SAN JOSÉ, Calif., April 11, 2005—LynuxWorks™ Inc. today announced it was cho­sen as the embed­ded oper­at­ing sys­tem ven­dor by Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Advanced Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems for the U.S. Army’s Future Com­bat Sys­tems (FCS) pro­gram’s Inte­grat­ed Com­put­er Sys­tem (ICS). Under terms of the con­tract, Lynux­Works’ Linux®-compatible Lynx­OS-178® safe­ty-crit­i­cal real-time oper­at­ing sys­tem (RTOS) will be used to meet the per­for­mance and reli­a­bil­i­ty needs of the FCS, a fam­i­ly of advanced, net­worked air- and ground-based mil­i­tary sys­tems for use by the Army’s Future Force.

As the com­mand, con­trol, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, com­put­ing, intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance (C4ISR) infra­struc­ture used across all FCS plat­forms, Gen­er­al Dynam­ics’ ICS will pro­vide com­put­er pro­cess­ing, net­work­ing, infor­ma­tion assur­ance, and data stor­age resources nec­es­sary to sup­port the net­work-cen­tric oper­a­tions of FCS.
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Now, look­ing at the Lynux­Works web­site there’s no ref­er­ence to Yuqub Mirza, although, on a side note, for­mer GOP VA gov­er­nor James Gilmore sits on its tech­ni­cal advi­so­ry board. But it turns out that one of the investors in Lynux­works was the Her­don VA-based Ster­ling Man­age­ment Group (SMG), and the Pres­i­dent and CEO of the SMG is Yaqub Mirza. Here’s an SEC fil­ing from 2000 for Lynux­Works (for­mer­ly known as “Lynx Real Time Sys­tems”) that lists “Ster­ling Lynux Group” as one of the own­ers and Yuqub Mirza as a direc­tor. Accord­ing to this site, Yacub Mirza might pos­si­bly still sit on Lynux­Work­s’s board. And here’s anoth­er com­pa­ny, PocketPass.com that has both Mirza and Lynux Chair­man Inder Singh of its board of direc­tors. The two appar­ent­ly put financed the crea
tion of Pock­et­Pass back in 1999, so the two appear to have more than just a casu­al busi­ness rela­tion­ship.

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Mil­i­tary Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture Accel­er­a­tor (MIAA)

The Ptech Frame­Work™ Mil­i­tary Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture Accel­er­a­tor enables mil­i­tary infor­ma­tion archi­tects and deci­sion mak­ers to cre­ate a com­pre­hen­sive, con­cor­dant con­text for plan­ning and man­ag­ing change in the infor­ma­tion-relat­ed capa­bil­i­ties that are crit­i­cal to the suc­cess of mil­i­tary oper­a­tions and enter­pris­es. With domain-spe­cif­ic meta­mod­els based on con­cepts and behav­ior rules adapt­ed from the DoD C4ISR Archi­tec­ture Frame­work, the CADM, and oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence, the MIAA cre­ates and auto­mat­i­cal­ly enforces a con­sis­tent tax­on­o­my (arti­facts, inter­re­la­tion­ships and rules) through­out all oper­a­tional, sys­tem, and tech­ni­cal view prod­ucts. The MIAA also incor­po­rates the abil­i­ty to orga­nize archi­tec­ture data accord­ing to Zach­man, Boer and oth­er archi­tec­ture frame­works, and pro­vides file-based inter­faces to the Joint C4ISR Archi­tec­ture Plan­ning Sys­tem (JCAPS) and pow­er­ful dis­crete event sim­u­la­tion capa­bil­i­ty (Design/CPN).
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