I think credit should be given for the standards-based, open architecture approach. I believe that is the right approach for a procurement project like this. The problem appears to be with the manner in which the requirements and delivery were managed.
It's easy to scoff at such failures but three-person startups and MVPs are a world apart in terms of the scale, time horizons and practical challenges faced by military hardware.
It's a pity the armed forces don't make better use of commercial talent when they're undertaking this kind of procurement project. They may be at the cutting edge when it comes to the technology they're looking to reply but the management techniques they're using are about 60 years out of date.
> I think credit should be given for the standards-based, open architecture approach.
True, but then the decision to expose FPGAs as part of the programming interface was absolutely wacky. FPGAs are some of the most proprietary devices on the market, usually requiring a vendor toolchain to even produce working bitstreams for the devices.
They defined the interface at the wrong level. They should have developed something like an MII interface and focused on open framing and message protocol formats rather than on open source waveform generators.
I think credit should be given for the standards-based, open architecture approach. I believe that is the right approach for a procurement project like this. The problem appears to be with the manner in which the requirements and delivery were managed.
It's easy to scoff at such failures but three-person startups and MVPs are a world apart in terms of the scale, time horizons and practical challenges faced by military hardware.
It's a pity the armed forces don't make better use of commercial talent when they're undertaking this kind of procurement project. They may be at the cutting edge when it comes to the technology they're looking to reply but the management techniques they're using are about 60 years out of date.