UCS Architecture

The Unmanned Systems (UxS) Control Segment (UCS) Architecture is published by the SAE under the governance of the SAE Aerospace AS-4UCS Committee. The architecture began in 2009 when OUSD(AT&L) released an acquisition decision memorandum (ADM) calling for a common architecture for Department of Defense unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) groups 2 – 5. That is, for all UAS larger than hand-launched/man-portable. The target systems for the UCS Architecture were listed in the ADM as Shadow, Hunter, Fire Scout, Predator/Reaper, Gray Eagle, and Global Hawk.

The UAS Control Segment Architecture was developed by the Government/Industry UCS Working Group in six-monthly increments through Release 3.4 (R3.4). Upon the formal completion of the UCS Architecture, it was transitioned from OSD to the SAE Aerospace Unmanned Systems Steering Committee (AS-4) in April 2015. This strategy was to extend the UCS Architecture into a unified multi-domain architecture for UxS. In December 2016, the UCS Architecture was republished as the UxS Control Segment (UCS) Architecture, AS6512™.

Since then, AS-4UCS has been developing Revision A to the standard, which will integrate the SAE Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS) service sets, provide maintenance of the existing UAS service sets, and become conformant to SAE AS6969™ (Data Dictionary for Quantities Used in Cyber Physical Systems). AS6512A™ is expected to be published in 2018.

UCS Concept

AS6512™ is a service oriented architecture (SOA) that specifies service interfaces (capability access points) and an associated data model for the UxS Control Segment. The UCS can be a single node or a distributed system, and can range from a hand-held device, to a mobile/transportable system, to a fixed site. UCS services may, therefore, be implemented on different software technologies (platforms) and integrated with other applications.

The normative UCS specification is a logical UML model. Service reachability depends on the platform architecture, i.e. the mechanisms for service discovery, cyber security and access policies, and networking protocols. The UCS logical model is therefore called a ‘platform independent model’ or PIM. A particular system implementation is called a ‘platform specific model’ or PSM.

In addition to the normative model, the UCS Architecture includes a context model. This informational model supports enterprise architecture integration and comprises a behavioral requirements model (based on system use cases) and a conceptual data model.