Government Computer News
Air ops centers get net-centric
System configurations improve info sharing
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Now that we’ve got them up to that standard configuration, [the task is] assuring that keep them linked together.” — Lt. Gen. Charles Johnson
The Defense Department has worked toward net-centricity for years, but progress has been slow. The Air Force’s decision to upgrade its AOCs is a significant step forward.
Lt. Gen. Charles Johnson, commander of the Electronic Systems Center at Hanscomb Air Force Base, Mass., said that, until very recently, the AOCs were limited to point-to-point information sharing.
“What the AOC has done for us now is to take us beyond that, so … now we’re allowing the technology to come on board that allows the machine-to-machine [connection] to move the data and information around,” Johnson said.
This approach turns the AOCs into a weapons system, he said.
That description, Johnson said, “really resonated with not only many of us in the Air Force, but our sister services, because that is really what it is. That is an F-15 sitting there, an F-18 sitting there, a B-1. … It is something that is that valuable to us that we need to consider as a weapons system.”
To get the weapons to operate to their full potential, as has been said thousands of times before, “it’s about the data,” Johnson said. “But how do we get that data to them, the enormous amounts of data? How do you fuse that data together so they get a picture of that battlespace to help them now make the decisions they need to make?”
The Air Force in September awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a contract to integrate and standardize the hardware and software at all 23 AOCs, many of which are very small and not necessarily manned around the clock. The contract is worth a potential $2 billion over 10 years, if all options are exercised.
“We’re currently responsible for nearly 90 percent of all the air operations center infrastructures out there today, 48 percent of the air operations baseline systems, and about 60 percent of the worldwide interoperations center support staff,” John Mengucci, vice president and general manager of Lockheed’s Mission and Combat Support Solutions Group, said during a recent briefing on the project in Washington.
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