Military Message Handling Systems: A Reference Architecture

Military Message Handling Systems (MMHS) have become established as the defacto way of exchanging high grade electronic messages within a national military enclave, between military domains and within operational domains.

The NATO and CCEB operational need to interconnect systems from different nations (and hence the systems of the suppliers used by those nations) has lead to a much greater demand for interoperability. This interoperability is enabled by a common set of technical standards and a common set of operational approaches between the communicating parties, which have been developed and implemented over many years.

As a result, the market place will no longer accept MMHS solutions that require large amounts of customisation and bespoke development within each implementation – the expectation is that the internal and inter-working issues have largely been resolved. The interfaces are standard, so the expectation is that Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) software should meet the external interoperability needs of any new solution, with modifications to the systems only required to interface to any pre-existing internal elements. When designing an MMHS for a new environment, or to adapt an existing environment, the key choices become how to adapt or enhance what is already in place, or which standard commercial products meet the interface needs of MMHS interoperability.

The Nexor MMHS Reference Architecture has been created to simplify the scoping and design phases of an MMHS deployment project. It identifies the key components of a solution and defines their functionality – pulling together the common standards and common approaches used in the industry.

A key part of the Nexor MMHS Reference Architecture is that it is product independent; it defines the major system components and the interfaces between them. In the architecture there is no assumption and no specification of specific vendor components. This way, it allows the operation of a MMHS system to be specified and agreed before being mapped onto solution specifics.

This White Paper is the first in a set of architectural documents describing the framework of an MMHS and provides a high level view of the components, their functions and how they are interconnected.