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The United States Army has published a white paper in which it requests the submission of prototype designs for the Combat Mission Future Force (CMFF)

The U.S. Army is actively developing the next generation of ground combat platforms, which includes the C5ISR/EW Modular Open Standards Suite (CMOSS) Mounted Form Factor (CMFF). In this area, Septentrio is providing the Army with a precise positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) solution with its advanced Septentrio Mosaic GNSS module.CMFF is a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) designed to enable rapid technology updates and capability upgrades through standardised hardware and software components. This modular approach allows the Army to rapidly deploy PNT, as well as capabilities such as Electronic Warfare (EW), on different ground vehicles and aviation platforms by simply plugging in feature cards to a common chassis.

The Septentrio Mosaic GNSS module, specifically the mosaic-X5, is a low-power surface mount module designed for mass market applications such as robotics and autonomous systems. It is capable of tracking all Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) satellite systems that support current and future signals and features Septentrio's AIM+ technology, an advanced onboard interference mitigation technology that suppresses a wide range of interference.

CMFF was developed as part of the Army's effort to reduce the size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP-C) of the C5ISR/EW system and to ensure multi-platform versatility through shared hardware and software components. The Army has defined a set of open architecture industry and Army standards to support this goal.Prototyping of the CMFF requires minimising the need for platform-specific integration and the ability to deploy incremental capabilities without the need for additional wiring or mounting blocks, or upgrading the CMFF chassis.

Additionally, the Army plans to use Other Transaction Authority (OTA) to contract with system/lead prototype integrators to deliver complete CMFF system products.OTA provides a flexible contracting approach that allows for the rapid award of prototype and production contracts to accelerate the acquisition of new warfighting capabilities.The use of OTAs has increased significantly, growing from approximately 40 contracts in 2012 to 2018 with more than 220 contracts valued at more than $2.5 billion.

CMFF implementation also involves the Ground Combat Systems Common Infrastructure Architecture (GCIA), an architecture based on an open architecture/distributed network design that uses a standardised core infrastructure in place of legacy, proprietary electronics, significantly reducing the time it takes to deploy and update new technologies in ground combat vehicles.The GCIA defines how the network will transmit and share data to support all the functions required to run different functions on a ground combat vehicle. It defines how the network transmits and shares data to support all the resources needed to run different functions on a ground combat vehicle, and provides benefits such as technology portability and rapid integration.

Through the implementation of CMFF and GCIA, the U.S. Army aims to improve the agility, lethality, and survivability of its ground combat platforms while reducing dependence on specific vendors, lowering costs, and improving system maintainability and sustainability. The development of these open standards and architectures marks an important step in the Army's efforts to modernise its warfighting capabilities in response to rapidly changing battlefield requirements and threats.The addition of Septentrio and its Mosaic GNSS module provides strong technical support in achieving this objective.

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