Open Architecture (OA) is one of the key new technologies of the DDS. A preliminary version made it's debut with the Terran Sea Block 2 frigate but the full version OA 2.0 will soon be introduced on the Block 3 and will also appear on the Velocity VS, Panther and Quasar ILU. So what is it?
OA 2.0 is a revolution in spaceship design. It is a plug & play architecture for ship equipment using the wireless control now in place. With OA 2.0 equipment can be replaced very easily by simply bringing the new equipment on board and changing the control link to it. The replaced equipment does not even have to be removed. All the changes are done automatically. Equipment is also automatically monitored, maintained and updated.
Another part of OA 2.0 is remote processing. Many ship systems can transmit data to another ship or a ground station for processing and then receive back the processed data. In tests ships have had certain systems switched off without the crew realising the processing was now being done elsewhere. In a combat situation this could be invaluable in allowing ships to keep operating even if systems have been damaged.
All OA 2.0 ships will also transmit a log of telemetry and control data to centralised DDS databases. This will allow the DDS to analyse the mass of data and potentially look for problems before they reach a stage they can be detected by other means and also track trends to allow improvment of DDS systems.
