Chris Bogdan: Booz Allen Eyes Open Architecture for Ground C2 System

Chris Bogdan, a senior vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, said the company is interested in developing a ground-based command-and-control system with an open architecture designed to support satellites used for national security missions, C4ISRNET reported Wednesday.

Bogdan said the Space Enterprise Consortium selected Booz Allen as one of the four firms to develop a prototype for the U.S. Air Force’s Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution program, which reflects the service branch’s transition to open architecture. FORGE will serve as a ground platform for the Space-Based Infrared System used to detect ballistic missile threats.

“What the Air Force wants to do is they want to create basically an open architecture ground system foundation that can be replicated with different satellite constellations, because if you build it open and you build it modular and you build it with cybersecurity already built in, now adding the different kinds of applications that you need makes life so much easier,” he said of the FORGE project. “It’s scalable, it’s extensible to new missions, it’s upgradable and it’s a whole lot cheaper than what they’re doing.”

Bogdan said he expects the service branch to downselect by the end of October for the FORGE initiative.