1. A lightweight reconfigurable communications architecture (RCA) radio system, comprising: at least one processor for executing processes running on the system; an operating system for managing said processes running on the system; an Object Request Broker (ORB) process configured for enabling communication of messages between two processes; an Application Launcher process configured for at least one of requesting and accepting RCA compliant applications via the ORB process; and a subset of a RCA core framework configured to provide functionality that allows the compliant applications to operate.