One government-owned program already exists that can enable previously incompatible networks and systems to exchange data without the need for common standards or open mission architectures. Effectively a software patch that can be installed on any platform, STITCHES acts like an international translator and software integration tool. STITCHES (the shortened name for the system-of-systems technology integration tool chain for heterogeneous electronic systems) can even enable machine-to-machine coordination and collaboration when programmed as part of the mission planning process.
Yet despite operationally effective performance with real-world weapon systems, STITCHES has struggled to survive in an industrial-age bureaucracy. However, the problem is not about STITCHES. The problem is the DoD acquisition processes. The department must update the defense procedures used to acquire, field and operate the software-based mission integration tools that future warfare will require.
Put simply, the DoD does not have a money category or management structure for software-based programs that span across platforms, domains and services. Still based on a hardware model, DoD acquisition is not equipped to support the software-based technologies that are the foundation of future warfare.
That was a really article at C4ISRNET by Heather Penney at the Mitchell Institute: Securing information age combat capabilities demands a new approach. STITCHES just intuitively makes a lot of sense to me, and I’d really love to see it accelerated. The author gets right to the problem: funds and management are structured on weapons platforms.
It’s ironic that the whole point of the acquisition system and PPBE was to bring all program information to make a joint force. And yet, by focusing on particular weapon systems, analyses look at one system in isolation, and then hand over that plan to managers who build it full-stack. There’s no program for interoperability.
And so jointness was viewed in this reductionist way, that so long as I don’t have duplicative fighter aircraft or combat vehicles, then I have the most cost-effective joint force. In reality, what is needed is a mosaic of overlapping systems all networked together. The networking, not the leanness, is what makes it all joint.
STITCHES is simply the best way to reach that networked interoperability because it doesn’t require a set-piece global architecture. See my podcast with Dan Patt on JADC2 and STITCHES. I think Dan recognized that the success of these concepts isn’t so much a technology problem as an institutional problem, and he has become a thought leader in portfolio management and the PPBE.
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