Summer 2010 The Chronicle 1 - U.S. Navy Hosting 2010 The Chronicle 1 4 Chairman, Joint Chiefs visits The nation’s highest ranking military officer visits to thank the SSC Atlantic

The ChronicleSummer 2010 1

The Chronicle2 Summer 2010


4 Chairman, Joint Chiefs visitsThe nation’s highest ranking military officer visits to thank the SSC Atlantic team.

6 5,000th M-ATV integratedIntegration team lauded for making a difference in the lives of warfighters.

7 CMMI® Maturity Level 3 attainedSSC Atlantic achieves the top CMMI® rating as an organization thanks to team effort across the geographical areas.

Summer 2010 Vol. 16, No. 2

On the cover

Adm. Mike Mul l en , chairman of the Joint C h i e f s o f S t a f f , i s interviewed by a local t e l e v i s i o n n e w s m a n during his visit to SSC Atlantic June 3. Photo by Joe Bullinger. See story on page 4.

Captain’s Call .................................2From the Technical Director ................3Ramping up Internet cafes ...............10 Ground broken for new building ........14Strategic Leadership Symposium ........16 Pentagon top EO official visits ...........23SSC Atlantic shares cyber expertise ...32 NMKMS collects medical data ............36SSC Atlantic outreach to schools .......42FEA award honorees .......................46The final word ..............................56

Commanding Officer .......... Capt. Bruce UrbonTechnical Director ................Christopher Miller

SSC Atlantic’s Mission

To provide quality full-service systems engineer-ing and acquisition to rapidly deploy capabilities to the Naval, Joint and National Warfighter through the development, test, evaluation, production, and fielding of sustainable, survivable and interoperable Command, Control, Communications, Comput-ers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, Information Operations, Enterprise Information Services and Space capabilities that enable knowl-edge superiority.

The Chronicle is a quarterly publication designed for SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic employees. Its purpose is to inform, educate, entertain and generate new ideas. An official publication, The Chronicle is printed using appropriated funds in compliance with Document Automation and Production Service regulations. Contents of The Chronicle are not necessarily the official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy or SSC Atlantic.

P.O. Box 190022North Charleston, SC 29419-9022

Editor ...........................................Susan PiedfortCommand Photographer ................Joe Bullinger

TheChronicle

InsideInsideSSC Atlantic engineers reached out to 14 area schools to promote science, technology, engineering and math education May 3 through 7, in conjunction with National Lab Day events. See story on page 42.


These are exciting times at SSC Atlantic!Recent highlights include a visit from our nation’s

highest ranking military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral. Mike Mullen, integration of our 5,000th M-ATV -- vehicles that are so vital to the safety of our warfighters on the ground in Afghanistan, groundbreaking for a new engineering center on the Charleston campus, and achieving CMMI® Maturity Level 3 command-wide.

I had the pleasure of traveling overseas with Admirals Mike Bachmann (SPAWAR Commander) and Jerry Bur-roughs (newly assigned PEO C4I) on what will likely be Admiral Bachmann’s last visit overseas before he turns over the SPAWAR reins. We vis-ited our teams in Stuttgart, Naples and Bahrain and met with custom-ers (EUCOM, AFRICOM, COM-SIXTHFLT and COMFIFTHFLT) at each location. Our folks at these overseas remote locations are doing a phenomenal job of interfacing with and providing support to these critical warfight-ing customers. A high level of customer satisfaction was clearly evident, and, in areas where addi-tional capabilities are desired, by and large, our Navy programs are already on the path to deliver those capabilities.

In August we will be saying farewell to Admiral Bach-man and welcome aboard to Admiral Pat Brady. Transition

planning is in progress for this change in SPAWARSYS-COM leadership. Admiral Bachmann has been a key enabler of our success at SSC Atlantic and we wish him fair winds and following seas. We look forward to Admiral Brady’s leadership as we continue to acquire, develop, deliver and sustain decision superiority for the warfighter.

June marks the beginning of the six-month hurricane season. This year’s season is forecast to be a doozie! We have completed HURREX09 to test our overall hurricane preparedness, response and recovery operations if disaster strikes. This exercise (along with the daily musters) was designed to help us all understand our roles in response to an approaching storm.

Please make sure your contact information is current and your residence information is in My-Biz and on CnE, and please make sure your home and family are prepared in the event a hurricane decides to pay a visit.

With the hum of air condition-ers now at a steady state in the Lowcountry, I know that summer vacation plans are not far behind. When you get the chance, enjoy time away with family and friends, and be safe!

These truly are exciting times at SSC Atlantic, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be going forward with this talented team. Keep up the great work!

Our folks at overseas remote locations are doing a phenomenal

job of interfacing with and providing support to critical warfighting

customers.

Moving forward with a great team


From the desk of

Christopher MillerTechnical Director

One Team, One Plan, One Future

As you read this article, warfighters are counting on you and me. More than ever, their lives - and our freedom - depend on the systems you engineer and support. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead has emphasized the vital role that information dominance plays. “In Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ve seen where our special forces have been able to take information and intelligence and fuse it into operations in ways that we haven’t been able to do in the past,” Roughead said. “That is the direction that all of our forces must move.”

These warfighters are counting on holding the dominant operational advantage whatever their assigned mission. What about tomorrow? And years from now? How do we ensure that our nation’s peacekeepers -- and the American taxpayer -- can continue to count on us?

It is with that frame of reference our senior leadership team began meeting in April to set the strategic direction for the next few years. The goal of these sessions was to en-able the command to manage complex change proactively. Over the past three years, there have been changes to the personnel system (DEMO to NSPS to STRL), the financial system (Navy-ERP) and our organizational construct itself. Any one of these changes is significant; all three together are monumental. As Admiral Mullen told us when he visited recently, he considers the greatest threat to national security to be our nation’s debt. So more than ever we need to make every dollar count as we prepare for an uncertain future.

To do this we’ll need One Team, One Plan and One Fu-ture. The power of “One Team” comes from the contributions of many players. It emerges when these players envision “One Future” and unite in the “One Plan” that will get us there. Once the team is so focused and committed, it sees possibilities or futures it could not see before. Becoming One Team is not easy. It requires leaving a comfortable and successful past behind us and moving toward uncharted common ground.

To bring our entire command team together (One Team) and to get folks on board and moving in the same direction, the SSC Atlantic leadership has been developing a shared set of strategic priorities (One Plan) centered on a themed

vision called, ‘We make IT count for the Warfighter and the Nation.’ You’ll be learning much more about this through-out the summer. You can expect to see lobby and hallway displays, blog discussions, and a strategy guide that will fit in your pocket. But for now, let me highlight a few points.

The plan provides the strategic roadmap for FY11-FY14. It builds in the necessary accountability measures to ensure strategic objectives are achieved. It uses the balanced score-card tool to connect the command, competency and business portfolio strategies. It calls for strategic effects that provide innovative solutions for today, tomorrow and beyond backed by well-managed operations that deliver quality, speed, agil-ity and value. Our mission is to rapidly deliver and support solutions that enable information dominance for our naval, joint, and coalition warfighters. And most important of all, it seeks to empower each individual to make a difference by investing in the values of our team:

1) Service to our country2) Excellence & credibility3) Responsiveness & accountability4) Diversity and teamwork5) Transparency in the way we conduct our businessIn addition to having a shared set of strategic priorities,

we need to finalize how we will operate in a competency aligned organization and integrated product team (CAO/IPT) manner. To realize the power of CAO/IPT we must come together across the organization to understand and embrace our roles. During the past 90 days, we have focused on how we will conduct business using this organizational model. A multidisciplinary team has documented a Concept of Operations (CONOPS) that has been peer reviewed by the Competency Board, the Portfolio Board and the Board of Directors. Our goal was to use this opportunity to really “get it right” as we developed the operational model that we will use every day. This was no small task and we’ll need to make adjustments as we evolve as a command.

Our intention is to publish the CONOPS and use it as training material so we all have a clear understanding of how our geographically dispersed organization will operate

Continued on page 27


Nation’s topmilitary leadervisits SPAWAR

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited SSC Atlantic June 3.

The admiral spoke to SSC Atlantic employees in the main engineering center, thanking them -- and the entire center team via video teleconference -- for its various contributions to warfighter readiness. The admiral also visited the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) integration facility to congratulate the MRAP All Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV) integration team for the recent milestone of completing the 5,000th M-ATV installation.

“I really came here with one single thought in mind and that’s just to express my gratitude for what you’ve accom-plished here. I recognize that this is not the only place an MRAP vehicle or an M-ATV is, but I am also aware that you are the final outfitters for this capability and that you have continuously improved – literally day for day, day by day, over the last several years, in this capability,” the admiral said to the M-ATV integrators.

The SSC Atlantic M-ATV integration team installs vital command, control, communications, computers, intel-ligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) equip-ment into the M-ATVs. These vehicles are then shipped to Afghanistan to aid the soldiers and Marines on their daily patrols. SSC Atlantic is responsible for the prototyping, testing, integration, installation and quality assurance of

At top, right, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, talks to SSC Atlantic employees in the atrium. Above, the admiral addresses MRAP integrators, as SPAWARSYSCOM Vice Commander Rear Adm. Joe Rixey, SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christopher Miller, SPAWARSYSCOM Commander Rear Adm. Michael Bachmann and SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon look on.

Mullen: ‘We can always depend on people like you....’

Photos by Joe Bullinger


all advanced C4I equipment on the M-ATVs.

“I speak very comfortably saying -- not just for me, but for Secretary of Defense Gates, as well as the other civilian and military leadership -- we are incredibly grateful for what you’ve done. There isn’t a trip that I take into theater where some young soldier or Marine won’t say to me, keep those MRAPs and MATVs coming. They save our lives. Tell whoever you see that’s involved in this thank you. So that’s part of the message that I bring as well,” the admiral said.

“... I couldn’t be more proud of be-ing associated with each and every one of you,” Mullen continued. “I’m fond of saying you’re as patriotic, as dedicated and as focused on achieving our missions and national defense as any of us who wear the uniform. And this facility is a very, very rich, live example of exactly that.”

The M-ATV answers an urgent and compelling require-ment to protect warfighters with a highly survivable, off-road capable vehicle. The M-ATV mission is for small unit combat operations in highly restricted rural, mountainous and urban environments that include mounted patrols, recon-naissance, security, convoy protection and communications.

Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. armed forces and the president’s principal military advisor. As such, he presides over all meetings and coordinates the efforts of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also advises the secretary of defense, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council.

Prior to this duty, Mullen served as the 28th Chief of Naval Operations, the Navy’s top uniformed leader and representative to the JCS. The admiral is from Los Angeles, Calif., and is a 1968 graduate of the Naval Academy.

Mullen is one of many high ranking Department of Defense officials to visit the MRAP integration facility. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, then-Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, and various U.S. Congressmen have visited the facility. SSC Atlantic has integrated nearly 16,000 MRAP vehicles and 5,000 M-ATVs. More than 8,000 M-ATVs – the next generation of MRAPs – have been authorized.

“... You have made an incredible difference to those who are in the fight, but I also would extend that to their families and the difference that you’ve made in their lives as well because of the protection, the capability that you really are generating here,” Mullen told the SSC Atlantic team. “We can always depend on people like you to meet whatever that challenge is.”

- Susan Piedfort, Chronicle Editor

From top, Mullen meets SSC Atlantic New Professionals; signs a pennant for the MRAP/M-ATV C4ISR integrators; and bids farewell to Commander, SPAWARSYSCOM Rear Adm. Michael Bachmann on the flightline at Charleston Air Force Base.


‘Congratulations, thank you, bravo zulu, Semper Fi’

On May 28 SSC Atlantic celebrated the milestone of integrating the 5,000th Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) All Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV).

The SSC Atlantic M-ATV integration team installs C4ISR equipment into the M-ATVs. SSC Atlantic has integrated nearly 16,000 MRAP vehicles and 5,000 M-ATVs. More than 8,000 M-ATVs – the next generation of MRAPs – have been authorized. The M-ATV mission is for small unit combat operations in highly restricted rural, mountainous and urban environments that include mounted patrols, reconnaissance, security, convoy protection and communications.

Like the MRAP integration, the M-ATV project is truly a team effort involving the vehicle manufacturers, the Defense Contracting Management Agency, industry partners, Marine Corps Systems Command, Army Joint Program Office, Army 841st Transportation Battalion, Military Sealift Command, Air Force 437th and 315th Airlift Wings, for shipping by air, Army Sustainment Logistics Command, Joint Base Charleston, Naval Weapons Station and the Coast Guard.

Since the M-ATV is within the MRAP family of vehicles, it is managed by the MRAP Joint Program Office, with the Marine Corps executing the joint program on behalf of the Navy (lead service).

“What you are doing here is very important to the warf-ighter,” said Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan, then-Commander, Marine Corps Systems Command and Joint Program Execu-tive Officer, MRAP, told the assembled crowd at the SSC Atlantic integration facility. “Every time an M-ATV goes

outside the wire, it saves lives. The government furnished equipment being integrated at SPAWAR plays a key role in that.”

The general noted that the pipeline is full through pro-duction, in the U.S. and in theater. “No warfighter is want-ing for trucks. They are in place as rapidly as warfighters can take them,” Brogan said. “Consider that there are five occupants per vehicle, 5,000 vehicles ... all those service members riding in M-ATVs, with a significant increase in their probability of survival. This translates directly to increased survivability of warfighters.

“You are bringing them home to their familes,” the general said.

“Because of what you do, our warfighters can execute their mission with confidence in the protection and capabil-ity provided by the MRAP vehicles,” Capt. Bruce Urbon, SSC Atlantic commanding officer, told the M-ATV integra-tors. “For this, you should be very proud. I know that I am proud of the whole team.”

SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christopher Miller noted that this M-ATV milestone illustrates what SSC Atlantic does best: logistical speed to capability and leveraging part-nerships. “Ronald Reagan once said ‘Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem.’

“Well, neither do you. You have made a difference,” Miller told the M-ATV workforce.


5,000th M-ATV integrated

Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan addresses M-ATV integrators May 28. Looking on is Paul Mann, MRAP joint program manager.

Photo by Joe Bullinger


CMMI®

Maturity Level 3 SSC Atlantic achievestop rating as organization

By Beth MeloyEngineering Process Office

SSC Atlantic has successfully achieved a Capability Ma-turity Model Integration (CMMI®) Maturity Level 3 rating.

Maturity Level 3 (ML3) is recognized as a significant benchmark toward world-class systems engineering. By achieving a ML3 rating, SSC Atlantic has enhanced its abil-ity to compete in the global market through demonstration of its engineering capability to produce quality products for its clients. SSC Atlantic is responsible for providing systems and software engineering in support of the U.S. Navy and other Department of Defense and government activities worldwide.

The SPAWAR command chose to implement CMMI® because it provides a structured model for process improve-ment. CMMI® is used to measure and improve an organi-zation’s ability to successfully plan, manage, and execute complex projects and yields improvements in cost, schedule, quality, customer satisfaction, and return on investment.

“Earning a Maturity Level 3 rating is a major milestone for SSC Atlantic’s integrated business units across vari-ous sites. This is an indication of our solid commitment to delivering high quality solutions and services to our cus-tomers,” said SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christopher Miller. “This continuous process improvement encourages innovation and creativity, and enables us to quickly adapt in a competitive and dynamic environment.”

In CMMI®, a project’s or organization’s progress is deter-mined by informal internal assessments or formal appraisals.

SSC Atlantic Chief Engineer Bruce Carter, who sponsored the CMMI® Maturity Level 3 appraisal, addresses the crowd at the April 2 final findings briefing.


SEI-Certified Lead Appraiser Rick Barbour presents the final findings of the March 23 through April 2 CMMI® Ma-turity Level 3 SCAMPISM appraisal.

Continued on next page


Tactical Messaging System team

In this case, SSC Atlantic underwent the most formal type of CMMI® appraisal: a “Class A” Standard CMMI® Ap-praisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPISM) v1.2 appraisal conducted by a Certified Lead Appraiser from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI).

Prior to the SCAMPISM, SSC Atlantic’s business units in Charleston, New Orleans, and Tidewater were all rated at CMMI® Maturity Level 3, but the organization as a whole could not claim a ML3 rating until the Command success-fully completed the SCAMPISM A and the appraisal results were approved by the SEI.

The two-week S C A M P I S M , which concluded on April 2, was sponsored by SSC Atlantic’s Chief Engineer Bruce Carter, who is the Direc-tor of Engineer-ing Operations. The eight-person appraisal team was led by SEI-Certified Lead Appraiser Rick Barbour and consisted of experienced CMMI® instructors, lead appraisers and con-sultants.

The 11 projects involved represented a cross-section of the engineering disciplines found at SSC Atlantic’s Charles-ton, New Orleans, and Tidewater business units. During the SCAMPISM A, the appraisal team reviewed 16,000 project documents and interviewed more than 150 SSC Atlantic CMMI® practitioners.

SSC Atlantic’s Maturity Level 3 rating is good for three years, after which the organization must undergo another formal SEI appraisal to determine whether it has continued

Shipbuilding and Conversion, Navy, team

CMMI®

Continued from previous page

Automation Program team Shipboard Automated Medical System team

Naval Tactical Command Support Systems team


to follow CMMI® best practices.The projects and respective project managers who par-

ticipated in the command appraisal include:Charleston

• Automation Program (AP), Ralph Shealy, 51P00• Cryptographic Modernization (Crypto Mod) Integration

& Installation, Tom Chilton, 582P0• Joint Threat Warning System (JTWS), Mike Niermann,

50D-56100• Shipbuilding and Conversion, Navy (SCN), Mike

Johnston, 63000• Ship Signal Exploitation Space (SSES), Martina Jack-

son, 50D-56160• Tactical Messaging System (TMS), Rick Widelski,

50C-55130• Visual Information Display Systems (VIDS), Mark

Turnbull, 50A-53770New Orleans

• Customer Support Center (CSC) Jack Walbridge, 41N00• Support Equipment Maintenance System (SEMS), Joan

Sharp, 54320Tidewater

• Naval Tactical Command Support Systems (NTCSS) Patriot, Donna Brewer, 544K0

• Shipboard Non-Tactical ADP Program (SNAP) Au-tomated Medical System (SAMS), Cindy Skinner, 54411.

Customer Support Center team Ship Signal Exploitation Space team

Cryptographic Modernization I & I team

Visual Information Display System team

Joint Threat Warning System team

Support Equipment Maintenance team


SPAWAR ramps upsupport

for OEF Internet cafes

By Dean BarsaleauSPAWAR OEF Internet Cafe Project Manager

SSC Atlantic achieved another milestone in its highly successful Internet café program in May with the deploy-ment of the first on-site SPAWAR lead to Bagram Air Field (BAF), Afghanistan.

Phillip Busse, a native of Charleston, S.C., normally works as an electronics technician and Common Submarine Radio Room (CSRR) subject matter expert in the Platform Communica-tions Engineering Division, Sub-marine Communications In-Service Engineering Agent (ISEA) Branch (55310) in Charleston. But his typi-cal workday took a decidedly differ-ent twist recently when he traded in his CSRR hat for a bullet-proof vest and battle helmet as the SSC Atlantic on-site lead for Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Internet cafés.

A retired senior chief electronics technician (ETCS(SS)) in the U.S. Navy, Busse is no stranger to hard work and enjoys the challenges of high tempo submarine installations and the continually evolving CSRR program.

“I have deployed many times while on active duty and traveled extensively for sub installs and tech assists,” Busse remarked, “but

this deployment to Afghanistan is something else entirely. Before, my focus was on the installation, operation and maintenance of primarily tactical systems and equipment, including mission-essential communications and crypto-graphic systems critical to performance of a submarine’s many missions.

“Working with the Internet cafés is a little different in that their focus is on the MWR needs of the troops deployed here.

Although the cafes do not directly support tactical or operational mis-sions, they nevertheless provide criti-cal communications links between the warfighters and their friends and families back home. These connec-tions are essential in maintaining high troop morale, and thus play a key role in mission readiness,” Busse added.

Busse is the first SPAWAR civil-ian to serve in the role as the on-site Internet café liaison in Afghanistan. Although SPAWAR has maintained Internet cafes in Afghanistan since 2003, the number of cafes in coun-try did not demand a continuous SPAWAR presence, and installation and maintenance could easily be carried out by deployed contractor teams. That has all changed with the shift in focus from Iraq to Afghani-stan and the corresponding build-up of troops.

DRS Tech Rick Logreco checks a satellite dish azimuth with soldiers at a remote site.

Phil Busse (55310) assists in pulling In-ternet café equipment for issuance to an Army unit.

Photos provided

Warfighter Support


Mike Hartman, the Internet café program manager, said, “With those soldiers comes a heightened demand for Internet connectivity, and SPAWAR has responded. In FY09 we more than doubled the number of active cafés in Afghanistan from 55 to 116. So far this year we have commissioned over 90 more, bringing the number of active sites to 210. And we have over 70 more in the queue!

“With this increased operational tempo, we decided to take a page from the Iraq Internet café playbook, where we have had volunteer SPAWAR civilians continuously deployed for several years,” Hartman continued. “We up-dated the position requirements for Afghanistan, developed a tailored recruiting presentation, and sent out an All Hands announcement advertising the opportunity. We received almost a dozen responses and narrowing the selection to the most qualified candidates was quite challenging. But we’re extremely gratified that Phil turned out to be our inaugural candidate; his presence on the ground there in Bagram has had an immediate positive impact, as we expected.”

In addition to the increased café fielding in Afghanistan, project execution is also complicated by a number of new technologies being fielded. Dean Barsaleau, the OEF Internet café project manager, explained, “We are integrating the Riv-erbed® Steelhead Wide Area Network (WAN) optimization appliances into the OEF Internet café architecture to mitigate the limited amount of Ku-band space capacity available over Afghanistan. We have deployed over 40 Steelhead 250 series client-side devices at our remote Internet cafes, along with dual 2050 series server-side devices and Interceptor appli-ances at our teleports in Usingen, Germany and Fucino, Italy. “These deployments will eventually grow to include a Steelhead device at each of our remote sites, and upgrade of

the 2050s to higher capacity 6050 appliances to accommo-date the increasing demand for bandwidth,” Barsaleau said.

“Although we’ve had some growing pains, we’re now seeing a 30 percent reduction in the amount of traffic that must cross the high-latency satellite links. This equates to a more efficient use of the limited bandwidth and an improved user experience for the troops downrange.”

Barsaleau continued, “Along with the Steelhead integra-tion, we also have plans to field security enhancements to the network in FY10-11. These upgrades will facilitate bet-ter protection of Personally Identifiable information (PII), such as the troops’ names, social security numbers, credit card information, and the like. Phil’s presence downrange will be critical to the success of this initiative, as he will help us ensure our fielding plans are properly designed and resourced to ensure success.”

Unlike the Iraq volunteer rotations, which typically last two to three months, the Afghanistan rotations will last a minimum of six months to accommodate the sponsor’s desire for continuity. “Once the roles and responsibilities are well-established, we will make a determination with USFOR-A on whether it is prudent to reduce the length of the deployment,” Barsaleau explained. “We must balance the sponsor’s desire for continuity against the difficulty of recruiting volunteers for longer deployments. But despite the time spent away from home, all of our volunteers believe in this mission and take great satisfaction in the direct support they are able to provide to our deployed warfighters.”

The OEF Internet café SPAWAR liaison officer (LNO) position carries multiple demanding responsibilities. The incumbent serves as the SPAWAR liaison to U.S. Forces-

DRS Logistics Specialist Francisco Rivera moves Internet café satellite equipment in the staging yard.



Afghanistan (US-FOR-A) for over-sight of the MWR Internet café pro-gram for the en-tire Afghanistan Area of Respon-sibility (AOR). Specific roles in-clude oversight of local support con-tracts, logistics and procurement management, re-quirements plan-ning, and coor-dination with the SPAWAR Internet café program of-

fice, 2½ time zones away in the SPAWAR European Engi-neering Division (55800) in Stuttgart, Germany.

Busse went on to describe his normal work routine as the SPAWAR LNO. “A typical workday here is much like a typi-cal workday anywhere, except we generally only work half

days; that is, 12 hours a day from 0700-1900. I typically go into my office around 0700, check e-mail and check to see if any issues came up the night before. After that, I spend my day working with the DRS regional manager, talking to the local technicians, and working with Scott Past, our USFOR-A sponsor, on any issues he might have. I coordinate upcoming Internet café initiatives and deconflict any sched-uled or emergent authorized system interruptions (ASIs). I also spend time communicating with Dean (Barsaleau, the project manager) in Stuttgart, going over reports, funding issues, requirements planning and properly managing our rapid growth,” Busse said.

However, he added, the environment is anything but typical.

“Aircraft, both fixed and rotary wing, are taking off and landing 24/7. There is no running water in most buildings, so any water for coffee or to drink is bottled and must be brought in. Bathroom and shower facilities are centralized, so convenience breaks require a little forethought. And there is always the chance the base could be attacked, as the mortar shelling that claimed the life of a DoD contractor in May demonstrated. But major attacks at BAF are rare. Neverthe-less, we never let complacency set in when it comes to safety and we are always mindful that Afghanistan is a war zone.

“One big plus here is working with the USFOR-A MWR sponsor and staff, and the DRS staff and technicians,”

Busse continued. “The USFOR-A MWR sponsor is responsible for all MWR activities in Afghanistan, including coordinating en-tertainment tours and sup-plying camps and bases with everything from gym equipment to televisions and video games. DRS staff and technicians are respon-sible for keeping the several hundred Internet cafés op-erating properly, installing new cafés, and responding to trouble calls from exist-ing cafés. Both groups are extremely professional and perform their jobs in a su-perlative manner; and it is a privilege to be able to work with them.”

Busse continued, “Bil-leting at Bagram Air Field consists of a one-person room in a wooden ‘B-Hut.’Although somewhat small, it does provide a place to relax when not on DRS Tech Patrick Horton checks signal quality on an Internet Café at Bagram Air Field.

Francisco Rivera (DRS Logistics Spe-cialist) stages a café for issue.



From left, USFOR-A J1 MWR Director Scott Past, USFOR-A Quality of Life Chief Dennis Shouten, and SPAWAR OEF Internet Café Liaison Officer Phillip Busse pose outside the MWR office at Bagram Air Field.

DRS Tech Ken Baker installs a satellite dish at Outpost café at Bagram Air Field.

duty. “My room includes a television,

free Internet access, a twin bed and desk. It’s quite comfortable. However, there are no attached bathrooms or showers, so we must walk a block or so to the showers and latrines. But there is usually plenty of hot water and the facilities are cleaned twice a day. We also have a number of dining facilities (DFACs) to choose from, in-cluding some that are open outside of normal meal hours and some that are open for “midrats” (midnight meals). There were AAFES concessions such as Pizza Hut, Burger King and Dairy Queen on base; but these were closed shortly after I got here. Even without these concessions, there is still a wide variety of good food available at the DFACs. And, there are several PX’s here where you can buy ‘in between meal snacks’ if you feel the urge. Also, there is dropoff laundry service that is free, so you don’t have to worry about laundry.

“Because of the surge, and the as-sociated rapid growth of population on Bagram, both military and civilian, there are lines everywhere for everything, but never any extra long wait times for anything,” Busse added. “This being said, it is a war zone, and conditions are very good if you keep that in mind. Although I miss my family and co-workers back in Charleston, it has been a relatively easy transition for me.”

Hostile area deployments do include some financial in-centives. As 12-hour workdays are the rule rather than the exception, overtime each week is normally authorized, and the incumbent is also eligible for Danger Pay, Post Differ-ential Pay and Pay Cap Waivers.

“I have seen my biweekly take-home pay increase sub-stantially. Those pay entitlements go a long way in helping to offset the harsh conditions we face over here,” Busse said.

Busse is scheduled to be relieved in October by Jessica Malcolm, who joined the Internet café team in May 2009 when she relocated to Stuttgart. Malcolm has deployed to Afghanistan once already in support of other taskings, so she is no stranger to challenges of deployment to a hostile area. In fact, she was eager for the opportunity to serve as the SPAWAR on-site representative. “I am so excited to have the opportunity to work directly with the warfighter; to hear firsthand how the MWR Internet café program is supporting them and what can be improved upon!” Malcolm exclaimed.

Another volunteer, Mitesh Patel from the RF Commu-nications Engineering Division, Narrowband SATCOM Engineering Branch (55220) is slated to relieve Malcolm in

March 2011. After that deployment, the rotations will repeat or additional volunteers will be recruited.

Those interested in a future rotation in support of the SPAWAR Internet cafés in Afghanistan should send an e-mail to the OEF Internet café project manager at [email protected].


The leaders of SPAWARSYSCOM, SSC Atlantic, local elected officials and military representatives gathered May 10 to break ground on a new, 20,220-square-foot Consoli-dated Engineering Laboratory.

Rear Adm. Michael Bachmann, commander of SPAWAR-SYSCOM; Rod Smith, deputy commander of SPAWAR-SYSCOM; SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon; SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christopher Miller and others took shovels in hand as they broke ground for the new building during a brief ceremony held on the Southside of Naval Weapons Station, Charleston.

More than 100 people gathered for the groundbreaking at the site just north of SSC Atlantic’s existing main engineer-ing center. Construction on the $9.49 million facility begins this fall and is expected to be complete by the summer of 2011.

The facility will be a hub for SSC Atlantic employees working with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), server

virtualization, cloud computing models, cyber security and defense, virtual storage, systems engineering and integra-tion, and other state-of-the-art innovations that drive today’s information technology environment. The new facility will serve as a catalyst for the transformation of new, cutting-edge information sharing technologies that SSC Atlantic delivers to warfighters, giving them information superiority and saving lives.

“This engineering lab will provide yet another opportunity for SSC Atlantic to lead the way for change, innovation and deliver capability to our warfighters,” said Bachmann. “For Team SPAWAR, this lab represents another key element that will support the innovation we need to make best use of cyberspace for our forces,” the admiral added.

The new facility is a critical component of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) 2005 commission’s recommendation to relocate the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center detachment in Pensacola, Fla., to Charles-

From left, Mike Beaumeir, vice president of Suffolk Construction Company, Lt. Cmdr. Stephen Fichter of Naval Fa-cilities Engineering Command Southeast; SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christopher Miller; SPAWARSYSCOM Deputy Commander Rod Smith; SPAWARSYSCOM Commander Rear Adm. Michael Bachmann; SSC Atlantic Com-manding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon; North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey; and Peter Wertimer of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce Military Policy Council turn the earth to make way for SSC Atlantic’s new Consolidated Engineering Facility.


Ground broken for new buildingConsolidated Engineering Facility


ton. BRAC’s recommended realignments and consolidations provide for multifunctional and multidisciplinary Centers of Excellence in Maritime Command, Control, Communica-tions, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR).

The overarching BRAC recommendation was to reduce from 12 to five the number of technical facilities engaged in maritime sensors, elec-tronic warfare, electronics, cyber security and information systems Research, Development, Acquisition, Test and Evaluation (RDAT&E). This will reduce overlapping infrastructure, increase efficiency and support an integrated approach to RDAT&E for maritime C4ISR. It will also reduce cycle time for fielding systems to the warfighter. BRAC’s goal is to realize improved DoD efficiency and effectiveness through synergies and collocation.

The building will house large lab spaces and office areas. There will be 35 cubicles, each accommodating one or two people, and three offices. In the large laboratory space personnel will work on product delivery. The facility will be staffed by personnel relocating from Pensacola, as well as new hires/new positions created locally to support work requirements.

The building will be “green,” designed to the U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) Silver Rating standard. Fifty percent of the construction debris will be diverted from the landfill. It will

use 30 percent less water and achieve a 2 percent daylight factor. The energy usage of the building will be monitored for one year to ensure it meets ENERGY STAR requirements.

“We are dedicated to saving warfighter lives and protect-ing our country into the future, and the sites and sounds of construction that will emanate from this spot in the coming year will be a daily reminder of that fact,” said Urbon.


Above left, SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon discusses the new facility’s ‘green’ benefits. Above right, SPAWAR-SYSCOM Commander Rear Adm. Michael Bachmann praises the SSC Atlantic team. Below, SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christo-pher Miller welcomes attendees before the turning of earth for SSC Atlantic’s new Consolidated Engineering Facility.


Story and photos by Sharon AndersonCHIPS Senior Editor

Ever wonder what SPAWAR’s top guns talk about at strategic leadership meetings? Well, mostly, they talk about you – how to improve opportunities for your training, es-tablish career path stepping stones, and how to align Team SPAWAR to make full use of your talents to better serve the fleet and Navy.

These were the opening comments at the kickoff of the three-day symposium on a damp, dreary March 2 at the Renaissance Hotel in Portsmouth, Va.

The symposium was conducted as an open forum to ad-dress areas of concern and form actionable ideas to bring to leadership attention for study and resolution.

The roundtable discussion and opening ceremonies were facilitated by SPAWAR’s director of Corporate Strategy Craig Madsen; and attended by SPAWAR Commander Rear Adm. Michael C. Bachmann; Vice Commander Rear Adm. Joe Rixey; Deputy Commander Rod Smith; then-Chief Engineer Rear Adm. Jerry Burroughs (who has since been assigned PEO C4I); as well as the national competency leads including 4.0 Logistics and Fleet Support, retired Rear Adm. Martin Brow; 1.0 Finance, Steve Dunn; and 2.0 Contracts, Tim Dowd; SPAWAR Technical Director Gary Wang; PEO

EIS Rear Adm. Charles E. “Grunt” Smith; SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon; SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christopher Miller; SSC Pacific Com-manding Officer Capt. Mark Kohlheim; and SSC Pacific Technical Director Carmela Keeney.

Vice Adm. David Architzel, then-Principal Deputy As-sistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, was a special guest and represented ASN RDA, the Honorable Sean J. Stackley, who could not attend. Architzel now serves as commander, Naval Air Systems Command, headquartered in Patuxent River, Md. He as-sumed his duties May 18.

Architzel commended the SPAWAR workforce and said that he wanted to express his appreciation, as well as Stackley’s, for the important work that SPAWAR does. The admiral said that he is particularly impressed by SPAWAR’s continuous improvement processes and attention to fleet needs.

“My message is pure and simple,” Architzel said, “I wanted to come down and understand what SPAWAR is thinking, take part in the strategic dialogue and just tell you how valuable your work is.”

The agenda items were a mix of workforce and organi-zational questions to be answered: how to support the new

T I D E W A T E R H O S T S

Strategic Leadership Symposium

From left, SPAWAR Vice Commander Rear Adm. Joe Rixey; then-Chief Engineer Rear Adm. Jerry Burroughs; Vice Adm. David Architzel, then-Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acqui-sition; SPAWAR Commander Rear Adm. Michael C. Bachmann and PEO C4I Rear Adm. Charles E. “Grunt” Smith pause for a photo op during the Strategic Leadership Symposium.


Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Domi-nance (N2/N6); SPAWAR’s role on the waterfront to provide C4I support to the fleet; engaging stakeholders to better meet requirements; Strategic Facilities Plan 2014; exiting the Na-tional Security Personnel System; and defining communities of interest to establish SPAWAR as the recognized center of excellence for service oriented architectures.

As one would expect there was serious discussion about the Competency Aligned Organization/Integrated Process Team effort ongoing across the systems centers and commit-ment to continuous improvement methods including: Lean Six Sigma, CMMI, P4I, the Baldrige Quality Path and other continuous process improvement tools.

The symposium began with a brief by Tidewater personnel who were the first students to partici-pate in a System of Systems Engi-neering Certificate (SoSEC) program through a SSC At-lantic partnership with Old Domin-ion University’s National Centers for System of Sys-tems Engineering (NCSoSE). But the 16 students who took the class just didn’t sit in a classroom; they applied the Sys-tem of Systems Engineering prin-ciples and knowl-edge and tackled a complex Navy systems problem titled Carrier Strike Group Information Exchange in a Capstone Case Study.

The group briefed their findings with assistance from NCSoSE’s Dr. Kevin Adams and Dr. Chuck Keating, who also taught the course and participated in the study. At the conclusion, Bachmann congratulated the students on their effort and offered suggestions for the program. Architzel complimented the students for conducting in-depth analysis on the Carrier Strike Group Information Exchange that lead to recommendations for the Navy to consider. Architzel said he found the students’ brief insightful, well organized and well worth continued discussion.

The SoSEC helps SPAWAR in several ways:• Introduces new methods and techniques for addressing

complex systems problems;• Integrates existing knowledge with new methods and

techniques to create innovative solutions for complex sys-

tems problems;• Reinforces the teamwork model of engineering complex

systems through a real-world case study; and• Analyzes a specific system of systems problem faced

by the Navy in a formal capstone case study which includes a report and briefing to senior leaders.

The following students made a huge commitment to the program but gained a wealth of knowledge that can be ap-plied to current and future systems problems:

Mark Auza – 55580 Electronics EngineerRom Barnes – 54560 Electronics TechnicianArnel Castillo – 55590 Branch HeadAntoine Etchene – 53410 Electronics EngineerJerry Fry – 54570 Electronics Technician

Pam Hawver – 55500 Division Head

Al Hosack – 56360 Electronics Technician

Bill LaBelle – 56360 Electronics Engineer

Kevin Lew – 55590 Electronics Engineer

J e n n i f e r Shauger – 54500 Division Head

Dr. Carol Smith – 4.0 Logistics and Fleet Support Deputy

Drew Smith – 555M8 Electron-ics Engineer

Mike Smi th – 55540 Branch

HeadCharles Thuma – 40000 SPAWAR HQDave Walters – 5.4 Local Competency Lead (now retired)Dr. Carol Smith and Shauger also managed administrative

details and coordinated with the NCSoSE staff. Systems of systems engineering efforts, such as the

NCSoSE partnership, are important for designing the in-creasingly complex C4I systems that have been previously conceived, developed and deployed as independent systems. These systems of systems will dominate the future of the Navy’s emerging net-centric warfare environment and will ensure SPAWAR remains on the engineering edge – an area where SPAWAR has traditionally excelled.

Although the weather didn’t improve much during the remaining two days of the Leadership Symposium, partici-pants received a warm Tidewater welcome with an invitation to come back soon.

Tidewater area employees who took part in the System of Systems Engineering Certificate (SoSEC) program through an SSC Atlantic partnership with Old Dominion University’s National Centers for System of Systems Engineering (NCSoSE) are pictured above.


(CAO), strategic planning, the technical director’s focus areas, transition from National Security Personnel System (NSPS) to Defense Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratories (STRL) personnel system, continuous process improvement, Base Realignment and Closure initiatives (BRAC) and cyber security work at SSC Atlantic.

“The speakers were very informative and feedback indicated that participants gained valuable experiences in personal leadership development,” said Kara Prasch, orga-nizer of the symposium.

SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon kicked off the symposium by welcoming the attendees and congratulated employees for their success on current projects such as providing wireless Internet cafés in Afghanistan, answering the demand for electronic equipment integration on MRAPs and M-ATVs, and progress on software develop-ments in support of the post-9/11 G.I. bill.

SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christopher Miller then presented a brief on his goals for the center and his initial thoughts and impressions since coming on board in January. The brief explored the current environment, the direction SSC Atlantic is getting from senior leadership, the chal-lenges of the next few years, and the driving factors in the SSC Atlantic vision.

He invited all SPAWARriors to look over this brief and the others given at the symposium, by going to https://cne.cse.spawar.navy.mil/portal/page/portal/CHS_HOT_TOPICS/Hot_Topics_2010/March_2010/Leadership_Symposium.

Miller discussed CAO use in private industry, noting that distinguished organizations such as Boeing, Cisco, IBM, P&G and Oracle use the CAO model.

“I am excited about moving forward and doing even more to support our warfighters. Our center has a world-class workforce and a great reputation as a can-do organization that delivers products daily. In short, we make information technology count,” Miller said.

New Local Competency Leads were announced in engi-neering competency areas: Stephen Torlay is Local Compe-tency Lead for Enterprise Systems Engineering (Code 5.1); David Smoak is System Test, Evaluation and Certification (Code 5.9) Local Competency Lead; Roger Daugherty is Business Systems (5.4) Local Competency Lead and Jennifer Clark is the National Competency Lead. Norris Mitchell is Local Competency Lead for Space Systems (Code 5.7).

SSC Atlantic

LeadershipSymposium

The symposium presentations and activities were video-taped for distribution to all who were unable to attend in person or via VTC.


SSC Atlantic supervisors and managers met in Charleston March 9 for a leadership symposium.

The event focused on topics SSC Atlantic leaders need to be aware of and understand, such as the center’s progresstoward becoming a Competency Aligned Organization


Additional Local Competency Leads announced since the symposium include Frank McAlhany as the SSC Atlantic Corporate Operations Competency Lead (8.0), Michael Shafer as ISR/IO Competency Lead (5.6) and Erick Fry as Information Assurance Competency Lead (5.8).

Portfolio managers were also been named at the sympo-sium: Kevin McGee for Decision Superiority; Mike Kutch for Information Dominance and Integrated Cyber Opera-tions; and Jackie Goff for Business and Force Support.

At the symposium, Fry, then-Defense Science and Tech-nology Reinvention Laboratories (STRL) Transition Team representive for SSC Atlantic, discussed the development of a new personnel management system to replace NSPS. SSC Atlantic and SSC Pacific must convert from NSPS to a “demonstration project” personnel system by April 28, 2011, and the transition is currently scheduled for March 2011. Fry discussed the unified STRL Demo Team, composed of a cross-section of both Atlantic and Pacific personnel, which is capturing and synthesizing the best aspects of existing demonstration systems into one that best suits the unique

needs of the systems centers. For more information visit the team’s blog at https://blog.spawar.navy.mil/strl/ to keep abreast of emerging STRL information and discussions.

Rob Kramer, senior associate at The Leadership Group and founding director of the new Center for Leadership and Organizational Excellence at North Carolina A&T State University, spoke about managers, leaders and directing employees through the process of change. Kramer also put the group through some exercises that were as enlightening as they were fun.

Michael Thomas gave a brief on SSC Atlantic’s Continu-ous Process Improvement (CPI) efforts, which encompass CMMI, Lean Six Sigma and other methodologies the center uses to improve processes.

Kevin McGee spoke about operationalizing CAO and integrated product teams (IPTs), explaining that the center delivers services through IPTs. A new organizational struc-ture is being created under which IPTs are grouped and fall under integrated IPTs (IIPTs), and IIPTs are combined into

The symposium, held at the conference center in Charleston, was attended by more than 300 supervisors and manag-ers from all SSC Atlantic sites.

Continued on the next page


portfolios. Ken Slaughter, presenting a BRAC update, briefed the

group on the new Consolidated Engineering Facility. A groundbreaking ceremony for the facility was later held on May 10. The military construction project is a result of a 2005 BRAC recommendation to reduce from 12 to five the number of technical facilities engaged in maritime sensors, electronic warfare, electronics, cyber security and informa-tion systems Research, Development, Acquisition, Test and Evaluation (RDAT&E). (See story on page 14.)

A brief by Mike Kutch centered on the cyber security work currently underway at SSC Atlantic, and Kutch solic-ited volunteers to join this team. SSC Atlantic has formed a Joint and Federal Cyber Innovation and Engineering Center. As a result of knowledge gained in the discipline, the group aims to develop a repository for cyber tools.

An exercise in making and launching paper airplanes, above and at left, gave the attendees a chance to stretch their legs and have some fun, as did a “networking” ex-ercise, below.

Leadership symposiumContinued from previous page


SSC Atlantic Sailors in Tidewater were on hand to help Norfolk’s Larrymore Elementary School during a Special Olympics event sponsored by Old Dominion University (ODU) and held at ODU’s lacrosse field April 13.

IT1 Craig Perry, LS1(AW) Vernon Lee Ferrer, LS2 Kori Cabbler, and LS1(SW/AW) Elisa Tillett helped the kids in events such as basketball, bowling, soccer, track events and baseball. They helped the children advance through the competitions, documented the events by taking photographs, and provided lots of moral support and encouragement for the athletes.

The event, held under sunny Norfolk skies, included ap-proximately 90 children ages 6 to 11 from Norfolk public schools. After the opening ceremony for the athletes, six medal events and 12 skill events were held, accompanied by lots of applause and high-fives. Medal events were the 50-meter walk/run, softball throw, standing long jump, hula-hoop toss, basket-ball shooting and T-ball hitting. Skill events included the obstacle course, soccer kick, weightlifting, beanbag toss, fitness, bowling, corn hole, hockey, track, ladder

ball and jump rope.

As the day progressed it was clear the volunteers and parents were having as much fun as the athletes. “Between helping the kids and taking pictures to document the event, it was an excellent experience and very rewarding to be a part of,” said Ferrer of SSC Atlantic’s Code 413.

“It helps give back to the community and it’s a great morale booster. We get to come out and help the athletes and see the smiles on their faces,” added Tillett.

The Sailors are members of SPAWAR Norfolk Club 56, an association for the first and second class petty officers at the command. Since they began volunteering with Larrymore El-ementary, the Sailors visit weekly to serve as mentors and to work with any of the children who are having difficulties with their les-sons. They also volunteer for the Meals on Wheels program three to four times a month.

Tidewater Sailors helpLarrymore studentsin Special Olympics

Larrymore Lions, top left, display their banner before the games begin. SSC Atlantic Sailors help document the event by taking photos, top right. A volunteer helper, right, gives some encouragement in the form of a hug.


The honor guard from SSC Atlantic education partner Military Magnet Academy provided the colors to open the leadership symposium held in Charleston March 9. Posing with SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon are mem-bers of the detail, from left, Deontre’ Wynn, Ja’quera Jones, LaQuetta Brown, Abigail Feria-Reyes, Tif-fany Washington, Bryan Heyward, and Sgt. Maj. D.C. Webb.



Silvas reenlistsat Military Museum for four more years IT1(SW) Jason D. Silvas reenlisted at the American Mili-tary Museum in Charleston, S.C., April 23, signing on for four more years of naval service. Conducting the oath of reenlistment was Lt. Cmdr. James B. Hadley. Silvas sup-ports the AN/TSQ-239 Combat Operations Center (COC) as a systems engineer. He is a member of the Architecture IPT and the Interface Management Team Lead.

Patriotismpartners


Diversity is not about counting heads, it’s about making heads count.

That was one of the messages from Clarence A. Johnson, the Pentagon’s top diversity management and equal oppor-tunity official, during a visit to SSC Atlantic March 30 to give two briefs on the impact of diversity.

Johnson, principal director of the Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity for the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, met with SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon and Technical Director Christopher Miller, briefed SSC Atlantic senior leadership and addressed employees in a second brief that was made available at all center sites via video teleconference.

“Diversity means collecting all the strengths, all the attributes to help execute our mission,” said Johnson, a retired Air Force colonel who has been in his cur-rent position for seven years. “Diversity is a key component to mission readiness, because it gives each individual an oppor-tunity to put his or her strengths forward to support the mission. We find that readi-ness does not owe any special allegiance to color, to sex or to race,” he said.

Johnson said the Navy is leading the armed services in diversity, and its top leaders are making a considerable ef-fort to ensure the maritime service reflects the diversity of America.

“Right now, the Navy has the best overall diversity programs of all the services,” Johnson said, giving Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Gary Roughead and his predecessor Adm. Mike Mullen -- now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – much of the credit.

“When Admiral Mullen was CNO he said that by the year 2037 he wanted the leadership of the Navy to be 13 percent Hispanic, 9 percent black and 12 percent Asian,” Johnson said. “This was huge. It gave specific goals. What Admiral Mullen did -- and what Roughead is doing now -- are a new kind of commitment to diversity,” Johnson added.

“Without question, diversity makes our Navy stronger,” he said, adding that diversity gives a strategic advantage to our military forces given the intersection with language and culture in our global operations. “The different experiences, backgrounds and talents of our Sailors and civilians help us be an unbeatable team. It allows the development and execu-tion of new ideas to ensure the Navy advances with the na-tion’s demographic changes and technological challenges.”

Johnson added that diversity is critical to get the best talent in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields – and that’s not just an employee recruitment issue. For the Pentagon, he said, it’s a matter of national security.

“Our charge is to capture intellectual strength to get the best solution for our armed forces and for our nation,” Johnson said. “You really need to be looking at the diverse attributes coming to the table to get the mission done.”

SSC Atlantic has an active outreach strategy aimed at attracting diverse talent by building connections with educators, business leaders and other government entities geared toward STEM fields. Through this outreach effort headed up by

Shanda Johnson, SSC Atlantic is reaching out to elementary, middle and high school students through partnerships, robot-ics competitions and a variety of events.

The center’s long-standing recruiting efforts have tradi-tionally been successful in making the SSC Atlantic work-force culturally and ethnically diverse.

“I recognize that creating and maintaining a diverse, in-clusive work environment is a journey of continuous steps,” said Urbon. “Together, these steps create a diversity value chain upon which we are building our winning workforce and workplace.”

As part of SSC Atlantic’s diversity program efforts for 2010, a number of other diversity events will be highlighted through the year, culminating with the command multi-cultural event Oct. 21.


Pentagon's EO director briefs SSC Atlantic

Diversity

Clarence Johnson


By Som Tantipitham and Matt ShapiroSSC Atlantic employees are hard at work analyzing and

developing processes necessary for the successful execution of day-to-day operations. Competencies are focusing on developing efficient processes to help meet their operational and strategic objectives.

The Science & Technology (S&T) competency is an excellent example. Dr. Al Emondi (7.0 Competency Lead) leveraged the command’s S&T subject matter experts and the Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) office to design processes by which S&T work will be brought into the command under the CAO construct. The S&T Opportunity Management Process (STOMP) CPI Event was initiated.

To develop new processes, the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology is employed. Numerous design models exist all with the same goal: using Lean principles to lay the foundation and structure for new processes and setting them up to be continuously improved through later lean events. DMEDI (Define, Measure, Explore, Develop, Implement) is being used for this effort.

Define: Emphasis is placed on identifying opportunities, objectives, scope and team composition. The charter directs the team to develop centrally-managed processes to identify S&T opportunities from external organizations, analyze them, and develop a proposal committee for selected op-portunities.

Measure: Teams focus on capturing the Voice of the Customer (VOC). The internal customer was defined as the S&T Community of Interest (COI) individuals who partici-pate in identified S&T efforts. A survey was disseminated to solicit information regarding existing S&T relationships with external government, industry and academic organizations.

Explore: The goal of this phase is to develop high-level design concepts, prioritize them, and select the best solu-tion. The STOMP team members developed the high level process shown below.

Develop: In this phase, the team created a detailed process design. Numerous tools in the process design toolbox were used: Quality Function Deployments (QFD’s), Kano analy-ses, process maps, Monte Carlo analysis, Failure Modes

and Effects Analysis (FMEA). SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, Processes, Outputs, Customers) diagrams were composed for each process step, and shown above.

Implement: Using this design approach, the team was able to identify the specific activities that would need to occur at each process step with a focus on sustainment documenta-tion and stakeholder outputs. The recommendations include:

• Establish an S&T Opportunity Manager to coordinate S&T efforts between the Business Portfolios and 7.0

• Establish an S&T Opportunity Sub-IPT• Implement a Balanced Scorecard Metric, which mea-

sures the percentage of a business portfolio that is S&T basedThis is an example of how the Design for Six Sigma

methodology can be applied to undeveloped processes. To learn more about DFSS and other CPI tools, go to the

Lean Six Sigma CnE portal page under Technical Solutions.

CPI maximizes S&T opportunities

S&T event team members are, from left, Som Tamtipitham, Albert Kunze, Matt Shapiro, Bruce Billian, Peyton Cavaroc and Dr. Suzanne Huerth.


Monitor Organizations

Identify S&T Opportunities

Analyze Appropriateness of

Opportunity

Good Opportunity?

Disseminate Opportunities Deveop Team

No

Yes

Stop

Develop

Supplier(s) Inputs/Req'ts Process Output(s)/Req'ts Customer(s)

S&T Opportunity Manager

Read and select published

opportunities

Deliver S&T Capabilities Brief

Analyze alignment of

sponsor organization

objectives with SSC-A

Meet with sponsor POC's (live or virtual)

List of criteria to ensure

opportunities are in line with

SPAWAR capabilities

(high level, e.g. technical areas)

List of monitored organizations

with associated opportunities,

dates, and POC's

On-Site/Off-site reps

S&T Opportunity Manager

Monitored Org's technical objectives

S&T capabilities brief

SSC-A

Monitored Org

7.0

List of specific opportunities

Technical growth recommendations for competencies

S&T Steering Committee

(S&T Opportunity

IPT?)

Council of Competencies

SSC Atlantic

SSC Atlantic


By Melany ReidSSC Atlantic

Health Systems Management Office SSC Atlantic Health Systems Inte-

grating Integrated Product Team (HS-IIPT) members were honored by Navy Medicine Leadership during the “Navy Days” awards ceremony conducted during the Health Information Man-agement Systems Society (HIMSS) meeting in Atlanta, Ga., Feb. 28-30.

HMC(SS/SCW/FMF) Roger A. Winslow of SSC Atlantic Code 41AA3 received the Dooling Award as Infor-mation Professional Enlisted Member of the Year for his superior performance while serving as SPAWAR Snap Auto-mated Medical System (SAMS) and Theater Medical Information Program (TMIP) Fleet Support Liaison.

Additionally, personnel from SSC Atlantic Codes 582, 584, 545 and 551 assigned to the Navy Medicine Information Systems Support Activity (NAVMISSA) Program Management Programs of Record (POR) Relocation Team received the Dooling Award for Information Technology Professional Team of the Year.

The Dooling Award is named in honor of Capt. Joan Dooling, MSC, who successfully planned, designed,

installed and operated the first inte-grated computing and communications infrastructure at all Navy medical treat-ment facilities and headquarters in the early 1990s.

Winslow was honored for his contri-butions and results-oriented leadership. His focus on the SAMS Communicator Enhanced application increased fleet use from 11 percent to 85 percent in less than a year. His initiative allows the fleet to report medical data via the Internet instantly, and provides operational commanders up-to-date medical readiness data and decreased processing time.

Cmdr. Robert Clipper, MSC, and Project Manager Lance Jones (from SSC Atlantic) led the diverse team of professionals from NAVMISSA and SSC Atlantic, successfully complet-ing the “first of its kind” relocation of nine PORs from Bethesda, Md., to the SSC Atlantic data center in New Orleans, La. Each member of the POR Transition Team played a significant role in making sure the relocation was completed with minimum impact to current users. The following personnel were critical to this ‘time-sensitive’ and mission critical move:

From NAVMISSA, Lt. Clint Zgarba,

James Bly, Jeffrey Carbonetti, John Boggess, Mark Ashton, David Brice, Glenda Raichlen, Terry Carlisle and-Brian Schafe; from SSC Atlantic, Cheryl Hawkins, Donna Baker and David Russell were lauded.

Additionally as the PORS transi-tioned to SSC Atlantic Data Center in New Orleans, Linda Connelly served as Data Center Integration Engineer-ing Team lead. Connelly, along with members of the SSC Atlantic Integra-tion Team Matthew Fotter, David Lun-dren, Chad Landry and Jerry Donahue, worked with New Orleans Program Managers Lt. Caleb Pulver and Michael Buckholtz, integrating the PORs to the new data center environment. Once integration efforts were complete, team member Steven Hollars monitored the equipment, serving as the sustainment lead.

The Dooling Awards honor the spirit of innovation and relentless commit-ment to superior service exhibited by these SPAWARriors. The culmination of these efforts are also key milestones in Navy Medicine’s aim to drive im-provements in beneficiary services while getting the most value from their NAVMED technology investments.

HMC(SS/SCW/FMF) Roger A. Winslow accepts award.Lance Jones accepts award on behalf of SSC Atlantic POR Transition Team members.

SPAWARriors receive Dooling AwardsExceptional information systems contributors


SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christo-pher Miller and William Paggi, SSC Atlantic contracts competency lead, were featured as panelists during an April 8 Community Power Breakfast that focused on the impact of the defense industry in the Charleston area, the future landscape and opportunities for small businesses to partner with SSC Atlantic.

James Ward, former SSC Atlantic techni-cal director who is now senior vice presi-dent of integrated systems and solutions for Scientific Research Corporation, was also a panelist. Derrick Nixon, director of C5ISR solutions for MTSCS, rounded out the panel for the event, which was hosted by the Charleston Regional Business Journal.

SSC Atlantic’s growing impact on the area in the past decade, and the future role the center will play in the cybersecurity domain were topics of discussion by the panel. The value of all goods and services associated with SSC Atlantic’s operations in Charleston had a total economic impact of more than $2.5 billion on the state of South Carolina in 2008, Miller told the crowd.

“SSC Atlantic has experienced incredible growth from 2000 through 2009,” he said. “The technologies that we work with are in great demand. How we operate, maintain and defend information networks is vital.”

He pointed to SSC Atlantic’s increased support to the medical community – developing electronic health records and protecting privacy information -- as evidence of the new emphasis on information security.

While the national debate and discussion may result in a decrease in defense spending, Miller said, information tech-nology and cybersecurity will continue to be in high demand.

“We will always need qualified people to get the quality products out the door,” Miller added. “Defense spending goes up and down. How we position ourselves is important.”

Ward agreed that in the next 5 or 10 years we may see changes in the defense budget, but “the areas of cyber, network security and network forensics are where the U.S. will put its resources. We have to have the right capabilities at the right time,” Ward said.

Ward told the approximately 200 breakfast attendees that he believes all the right ingredients needed for the current and

future defense of the country are located in Charleston – the right people with the right expertise, the right facilities, and vital air, rail and sea transportation hubs.

But more emphasis is needed on developing an academic environment that allows engineers and scientists to maintain and build on their competencies, Ward noted. “If the state of South Carolina knew what it has in SPAWAR, there would be more opportunities for graduate level education in this area,” Ward said.

The jobs associated with SSC Atlantic are highly techni-cal, such as engineers, software developers, contract special-ists and other occupations that require continuous learning, Miller added. There is a need to establish local master’s and doctorate level educational opportunities in these fields. “This is a challenge to educational institutions, because the technology is changing so fast,” Miller said.

Much of the panel discussion centered on SSC Atlantic’s strong relationships with its industry partners, many of them small businesses. Paggi, noting that 60 percent of SSC Atlantic’s work is touched by industry partners, introduced Bob Meddick, SSC Atlantic’s Deputy for Small Business Contracts, and encouraged the attendees interested in doing business with SSC Atlantic to contact Meddick or attend

SSC Atlantic panelists discuss impact of defense industry

Community


From left, Andy Owens, editor of the Charleston Regional Business Journal and panel moderator, James Ward, Derrick Nixon, SSC Atlantic Contracts Competency Lead William Paggi and SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christopher Miller are featured at the April 8 Community Power Breakfast.

Photo by Tom Egbert


Deadline for The Chronicle Fall 2010 issue is Aug. 15

What’s happening in your world that our readers need to know about? We need to know by Aug. 15.

We are already collecting content to fill the pages of the Fall 2010 issue of The Chronicle. If you have a story that you’d like to see there, the deadline to submit it is Aug. 15. Send it to [email protected].

Contact the editor any time with a story idea at (843) 218-4973, DSN 588-4973 or by e-mail.

We look forward to reading your stories about the great work you’re doing as a part of the SSC Atlantic team. The power of your experiences is even greater when you take the time to share them!

Have you moved recently or been relocated? Do you want more copies of The Chronicle, or do you want to be removed from the distribution list? Contact the edi-tor to make the appropriate changes to our distribution.

in a streamlined and standardized manner. I truly believe CAO/IPT is the foundation we need to build upon to unite our command and elevate our capability to the next level. During July, August and September, you can expect nu-merous training events, briefings and boot camps not just in Charleston but at many of our office locations to help create the smooth transition we envision as we bring CAO/IPT to life and generate many career and growth opportuni-ties across our command. See more information on CAO/IPT at https://cne.cse.spawar.navy.mil/portal/page/portal/CNE_ORGANIZATIONAL/Competency%20Aligned%20Organization%20(CAO).

It’s important to recognize that no single element of our CAO/IPT matrix can be successful on its own - we need and depend on each other. The competencies are accountable for developing the workforce for today and the future. This includes education and training of our employees. The IPT, Sub-Portfolio and Portfolio leaders have the responsibility to provide the Competency managers insight into the tech-nical skill sets required for both today’s work and for the future workload. They then must provide feedback to the Competency managers on our employees and their abilities to apply their competency skill sets to the customer’s work. This example shows how we all play a role in what appears to be solely the responsibility of one side of our CAO IPT matrix. This example is repeated over and over for other things like carryover, customer relationships, developing new business, etc.

Team players can go to common ground when they speak and listen to one another in honest and direct communica-tions. During the past few months, we have opened new channels of communication with Web 2.0 tools. We have

shared information and opinions in a growing Atlantic pres-ence on Blog Planet. At their best, blogs are intersections where different perspectives meet and challenge one an-other’s assumptions. Blogs on leadership, communications, social networking, CPI and most recently teleworking (the last with over 100 comments posted) are providing active forums for generating fresh ideas on how we can work more effectively. “Yes/No Surveys” in May and June have sparked interest (1,000+ responses) on areas for improvement and actions taken to address them. The Atlantic Daily News Blog is the most visited SPAWAR blog (8,000+ hits per week at last count) for timely access to news and announcements of open positions, available materials, training and more.

We have published foundational documents and offered the community the opportunity to comment on them using wikis. At their best, wikis encourage interaction and visible, efficient congruence on such key knowledge. The wiki for the CAO/IPT CONOPS is giving the workforce insight into the complexity of the new organizational construct and engaging you in making it work. The wiki for Navy-ERP Year End Support is collecting tools to expedite our first year end and give the workforce a path to help as needed. Project Teams are using wikis to share project documents and focus team interactions on them.

Finally, we have provided a meeting place for people to voluntarily share information about themselves and make connections with others with social networking tools. Social networking builds professional relationships and productive teams. Our FUSION Expert Locator is now in Beta Test and creating a lot of buzz as people experiment with it and use it to make connections that are a natural part of how they choose to interact with one another and get work done.

I know that’s a lot to remember. As mentioned, there will be more to read about during the summer. For right now, I ask each of you to start thinking and behaving as ‘One Team, One Plan’ centered on a vision of, ‘We Make IT Count for the Warfighter and the Nation.’

quarterly small business symposiums. “We need our small business industry partners,” Miller

said. “Small business is where the good ideas come from. It’s all about the good ideas,” he added.

Nixon agreed that contractors who have something unique

or innovative to offer the government have a definite advan-tage for contracting opportunities.

He agreed that the need for cybersecurity is a demand that will grow in the future. “The work SSC Atlantic and their industry partners are doing in this area is leading edge. It’s making a difference today and tomorrow,” Nixon said.


Continued from previous pagePower Breakfast

Continued from page 3

One Team, One Plan, One Future


A Publish It! product by Shayna Johnson, PhD

The Educational Partnership Agreement (EPA) between SSC Atlantic and The Citadel is an important interface for both or-ganizations, as it strengthens the education of our young and en-hances the educational experience of cadets at The Citadel by provid-ing access to the staff, expertise, facilities and equipment related to naval warfare systems technology available at SSC Atlantic.

It also promotes cadets’ interest in science, math and engineering, particularly related to space and naval warfare systems technology. This is a great way to expand ex-isting SSC Atlantic initiatives for engineering students, such as co-op student and summer intern pro-grams, as well as to add potential new mentoring programs.

Hillary Harris is an SSC Atlantic employee and recent graduate of The Citadel who has benefited from the EPA. She currently supports SSC Atlantic as a general support technician in Code 50DE1, under Command Chief Engineer Bruce Carter, Code 50E, in the STEP (Student Temporary Employment Program) program as an intern, and she antici-pates transitioning to a New Professional soon.

Her responsibilities at SSC Atlantic include acting as an assistant project manager and as a Web site content manager for Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaisance/Information Operations/Information Assurance (ISR/IO/IA) & Cyber-security Chief Technologist Dr. Stephen Jarrett’s Technical Intelligence Web site.

Harris recently received her bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from The Citadel. She also earned the Colonel Charles C. Lindbergh award (see story on next page) for outstanding academic achievement in civil and environ-mental engineering, service to the engineering profession and to the community. She received Gold Stars and Dean’s List designation every semester for academic excellence.

She served as the president of The Citadel section of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), member of the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), the Engineering aca-demic honor society Tau Beta Pi, Phi Kappa Phi (honors so-ciety), and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

Her time as an intern at SSC Atlantic afforded her the opportunity to work on an engineering-related innovation project. The project involved real-time monitoring of dams and levees to prevent failures and resulting disasters.

Before beginning her internship, she also participated in a community service project that was part of the Educa-tion Partnership Agreement between The Citadel and SSC Atlantic.

The project, at SSC Atlantic’s Poseidon Park where electromagnetic testing of military vehicles is performed, required civil engineering work including developing a site plan and conducting a land survey.

Working at SPAWAR has allowed her to apply the basic knowledge and skills obtained while earning her degree. Real world applications of the software and technology were used in projects and assignments for school. Her experience at SPAWAR has allowed her to see how the different specialty areas of engineering come together and overlap.

One of her future goals is to obtain a master’s and PhD degree in civil engineering. Professionally, she also aspires to become a licensed professional engineer, which she can look forward to since passing the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam in October 2009. Her time at SSC Atlantic has influ-enced her perspective of things as a civil engineer will prove to be beneficial to the long term goals of the organization.

SSC Atlantic intern graduates from The Citadel


Hillary Harris takes a break from her studies at The Citadel

Partners


SSC Atlantic employee Adam Tyson of Code 52130 was among 10 Citadel students recently receiving Technical Project Management (TPM) Graduate Certificates. Tyson is also graduated with a master of science degree in computer science in May.

In as many years, this was the fourth group to complete the graduate program under The Citadel School of Engineering and The Citadel Gradu-ate College. James Ward, former SSC Atlantic Technical Director now senior vice president of the Integrated Systems and Solutions Division of Scientific Research Corporation, addressed the graduates. He encouraged them to smile (keep a good attitude), grow (don’t stop learning) and make good decisions (do your best and keep good company).

Also taking part in the ceremony was Dr. Keith Plemmons, a Citadel professor and SSC Atlantic 5.0 employee, who helped officiate the ceremony and award certificates.

The TPM certificate reflects 12 credit hours, or four courses, of graduate study toward a master of science degree in proj-ect management (MSPM). The TPM program is designed to help working professionals develop career enhancing knowledge, skills and abilities by applying an integrative systems approach to project management.

The MSPM is a flexible, 30-credit hour course of study designed to offer advanced learning opportunities for students with either technical or nontechnical backgrounds through coursework in project management, leadership and professional skills. The project management courses focus on the application of best known practices for managing people and resources. The leadership courses study examples of ap-plied leadership and communication skills for leaders. The professional skills courses allow a student to bring several technical or nontechnical courses into their degree based on their career and professional interests.

SSC Atlantic and The Citadel have an active Educational Partnership Agreement (EPA) which strengthens relationships and increases connec-tions at the two organizations.

SSC Atlantic’s Tyson among TPM Graduate Certificate recipients at The Citadel

Former SSC Atlantic Technical Director James Ward speaks to the TPM graduates.

SSC Atlantic’s Hillary Harris was presented the Charles Lindbergh Award, given annually to a Citadel undergraduate evening student in civil and environmental engineering for outstanding academic achievement, service to the engineering profession and to the community.

The award honors Charles Lind-bergh, Citadel class of 1958, who served as head of the civil engineering department from 1981 to 1993.

Harris successfully passed the fun-damentals of engineering examination, part one of a two-part test to become a professional engineer.

She served as president of The Cita-del section of the Society of Women Engineers and was a member of both The Citadel chapters of Women in Sci-ence and Engineering and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Harrisreceives

Lindbergh Award

Dr. Dennis Fallon, Dean of Engineer-ing at The Citadel, presents Hillary Harris the Col. Charles Lindbergh award.

Photo by Russ Pace

Adam Tyson


Recent Citadel graduate Ens. Stephen Kyle Spalding received the Robert G. Miller Memorial Sword -- which honors the father of an SSC Atlantic employee -- during an awards convocation held at The Citadel in May.

The award is named for Robert G. Miller, born in 1924 to second generation immigrant parents from Germany. He served in many Seventh and Third armies campaigns across Europe, including the Battle of the Bulge. Always drawn to the sea, the former Sea Scout served as a Sea Scouting Master and later joined the U.S. Power Squadron, teaching the public boating class for many years. He was a certified navigator with a “full certificate” and served as commander of the Palisades Power Squadron in New Jersey.

This was the third annual presentation of the award estab-lished by SSC Atlantic’s Bob Miller of Code 72 and sibings Patricia, Maureen and James as a memorial to their father.

Spalding graduated with a major in history and a minor in East Asian studies at The Citadel. His honors included Deans List (seven times) and Gold Stars (three). He has

From left, Robbie, Sherri, Madelyn and Bob Miller pose with Ens. Stephen Spalding, Stephen’s dad Timothy, Ste-phen’s fiance Ellery Whitfield and Stephen’s mom Janis at The Citadel convocation.

The Citadel’s Spalding presented sword in honor of Robert G. Miller

orders to the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command on Naval Weapons Station, Charleston.

The sword is presented to The Citadel NROTC sea ser-vices candidate who embodies Robert G. Miller’s leadership skills and dedication to serve his nation and others.

Photo by Joe BullingerEnsigns on board

Photo by Russ Pace

On May 26 Bob Miller of Code 72 hosted 14 Navy ensigns recently graduated from The Citadel. SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon and Deputy Chief Engineer Cmdr. Karl Eimers presented overviews of SSC Atlantic projects and programs, all as part of community outreach for the center’s Educational Partnership Agreement with The Citadel. The ensigns also heard presentations in the Integrated Products Lab, Real World computer-based modeling and simulation, Common Submarine Radio Room, Air Traffic Control center and re-ceived a tour of the MRAP/M-ATV integration facility. For the first time, the new ensigns from The Citadel will be assigned to SSC Atlantic for several months as they await orders for their warfare specialties, such as nuclear power, aviation, Surface Warfare Officer, Engineering Duty Officer or other training.


Story and photos by Sharon AndersonCHIPS Senior Editor

SPAWARSYSCOM Commander Rear Adm. Mike Bachmann paid a farewell visit to SSC Atlantic personnel June 15 in Tidewater in building Z-133 on the Norfolk Naval Station.

Bachmann first met with military members and was the officiating officer in the ceremony to reenlist Logistics Specialist 1st Class Antoric Pullom, who was joined by his wife, their 2-year-old daughter and Pullom’s mother-in-law.

The admiral thanked military members for their service and said, “Cherish your days in uniform. As the time gets closer for me to be out of uniform; I’m cherishing every day.”

Bachmann then joined a small group of civilian personnel where he remi-nisced about the rich heritage of successful projects accomplished by SSC Atlantic, and a couple of its predecessor organizations, such as NAVMASSO (Navy Management Systems Support Office) and NARDAC (Navy Regional Data Automation Center). Bachmann’s remarks were greeted with smiles and nods of acknowledgement.

The admiral discussed current projects such as the implementation of the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) service oriented architecture, and praised other efforts led by SSC Atlantic such as the work be-ing done in the high profile Chapter 33 project to automate increased GI Bill educational benefits for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the management of Defense Travel System help desk.

Bachmann thanked the workforce for their many achievements and encour-aged them to seize the daily opportunities to support the Navy and warfighter.

Tidewater’s Patricia Fuller of the SSC Atlantic Integration Team and Mark Wilde, 80T, Corporate Operations, Tidewater, representing the workforce, thanked Bachmann for his leadership and support.

The admiral gets a kick out of a parting gift presented by Tidewater’s Patricia Fuller of the SSC Atlantic Integration Team: a box of cookies for him to enjoy on his drive to An-napolis, Md.

Rear Adm. Mike Bachmann reenlists Logistics Specialist 1st Class Antoric Pullom during the admiral’s Tidewa-ter visit.

COMSPAWARSYSCOM Rear Adm. Mike Bachmann joins a small group of civilian personnel to discuss past and present projects accomplished by SSC Atlantic and to thank the workforce for its support of the Navy and warfighters.

Photos by Sharon Anderson

SPAWARSYSCOM commander bids farewell to Tidewater team


SPAWAR team shares cyber expertiseAs more and more daily activities are taking place in

cyberspace, the need for cyber security is increasingly more important. Experts agree that because cyberspace is relatively new, many well-intentioned people do not fully understand the threats and harm caused by an unsecured cyberspace.

On an individual level, an unprotected system can give adversaries access to personal information. On a national level, unprotected systems give the enemy an opportunity to

compromise na-tional defense and endanger lives.

With cy-ber space, cyber war-fare and informa-tion as-surance as core com-p e -ten-

cies, SSC Atlantic delivers secure C4ISR capability to a multitude of naval, joint and national customers.

But during recent national college competitions that pitted students against hackers, SSC Atlantic experts who normally use their knowledge and expertise to protect networks got the chance to play the bad guys and hack into networks.

Students who arrive to take part in the National Col-legiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) are presented this scenario upon arrival:

Imagine that you have just gotten a job as director of information assurance for a small company. You have to familiarize yourself quickly with the network and security levels in place, and at the same time keep up with the needs of all the users and maintain all critical Internet services.

Almost immediately, your network comes under attack from hackers.

CCDC competitions utilizing this scenario took place around the country in March and April. SSC Atlantic em-ployees participated in regional competitions in the North-east, Southwest and North Central, and they moved up to the national competition held April 16 through 18 at Texas A&M University in San Antonio.

While college students were on the Blue team (defense), SPAWARriors served as Red team members (hackers), White team (judges) and recruiters. Participating from SSC Atlantic were Jeff Bullock, Jeff Scaparra (both of whom took part in all the competitions), Mark Bienz, Mike Kozma, Christina McCaffrey, Jonathan Searight, Shann Ladiser, Marcin Pohl, Greg McKoy, Stephen McManus and Ronald Prine.

From left, SSC Atlantic employees participating in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) were, Shann Ladiser, Mark Bienz, Jeff Scaparra, Stephen McManus, Jeff Bullock, Jonathan Searight, Greg McKoy, Chris-tina McCaffrey and Marcin Pohl. Not pictured are Ronald Prine and Michael Kozma.

Concordance Company, Ltd.

Anywhere, USA

March 13, 2010

Greetings,

Congratulations on your new employment as the IT Services

Department for Concordance Company, Ltd!

As you know, your predecessors were terminated for gross

negligence and alleged malfeasance. Please be aware that our

general counsel has advised us that, since the charges are currently

pending, we cannot discuss the details of the case. In your role

as the new custodians of our Information Technology resources,

however, you may be asked to help with the investigation.

Unfortunately, one of the reasons the previous group was

released is that our audit group discovered that they had neglected

to comply with basic documentation and communication policies.

As a result, we do not have specific details about the configura-

tion of our servers.

I apologize, but we don’t have the details of what software

programs are providing our services, or what operating systems

are being used, other than that there is a mix of Windows, Linux,

and UNIX.

There may, further, be other systems in use behind the scenes

that we are not aware of, in addition to systems that our users

interact with. It is of course essential that the level of service we

provide to is not reduced, and that the crucial business data our

employees store on our services is not lost. Thanks,

Chief Technology Officer



The competitions, which pitted them against some of the best and brightest university students from around the country, also gave the SPAWAR teams the opportunity to showcase SSC Atlantic’s talent in the cyber arena.

“I think the best benefit of our participation was the as-sociation of SPAWAR and cyber in the same context,” Bull-ock said. “Some of the best new recruits for cyber security were at these competitions - and now they’re familiar with who SPAWAR is, what we do, and our role in cyber. This new battlefield that is cyber excited the students - they were thrilled to hear that what they do for fun are skills hard to find and much needed now and in the coming years.”

Besides learning the operational aspects of managing and protecting an existing “commercial” network infrastructure, the competitions gave the students a chance to network and interact with SSC Atlantic professionals and discuss many of the security and operational challenges the students will face when they enter the job market. The competitions gave the SSC Atlantic teams a chance to interact with up-and-coming engineers who may one day be working alongside them as employees.

Unlike traditional “hack and defend” or “capture the flag” contests, this competition tested each Blue team’s ability to operate, secure, manage and maintain a corporate network. This competition is the first to create, as closely as possible, a realistic corporate administration and security experience -- giving the competitors a chance to compare their education and training against their peers and the real world challenges that await them.

Each team started the competition with identically con-figured systems and followed a very strict set of rules. They were provided the overall system architecture, network configuration, and initial set-up prior to the event to permit planning, but did not have detailed information, such as patch levels and application versions, ahead of time.

All teams were connected to a central router and scoring system. Network traffic generators were used throughout the competition to generate traffic on each team’s network, including typical user traffic and suspicious or potentially malicious traffic. The Blue teams also had to deal with troublesome employees and unreasonable management in some of the scenarios.

Scoring was based on keeping required services up, con-trolling and preventing unauthorized access, and completing business tasks that are assigned throughout the competition. Teams accumulated points by successfully completing injec-tions and maintaining services. Teams lost points by violat-ing service level agreements, usage of recovery services, and successful penetrations by the Red team.

Volunteers who served as White team judges observed the competition, ensured team compliance with the rules, and handled tasks such as scoring scripted business events during the competition.

Jeff Bullock and other Red team members use their skills to challenge the Blue team, as White team judges look on.

SSC Atlantic’s Mark Bienz mans the SSC Atlantic recruit-ing booth at the competition.

Photos by Jeff Scaparra



Cyber competitionThe White team spends the competition in the team rooms

and gets to observe the whole competition, explained Scap-arra. “The White team gets opportunities to see exactly which teams work well and which teams are struggling. From a recruiting standpoint this is more valuable than the normal five minutes standing at the recruiting booth and talking to the students,” he said.

“Additionally, we hear the students talk about strategies and other projects which might give us more insight and then we can follow up with that when we see them later at the recruiting booth,” Scaparra added.

The recruiters, in most cases, were White team members that helped with judging during the competition and during noncompetition hours spoke with students at the recruiting booth.

For Scaparra, CCDC is a very rewarding experience, and one he believes is very valuable not only to the command but to the nation. In fact, he has written a paper on his CCDC experience that will be published at the World Congress of Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Applied Computing-2010 in the security and management track.

“I have seen the competition grow tremendously over the

last five years and believe that it will continue to get better and grow,” he said.

Over the years he has seen that Red teams have had to change tactics in order to be effective. “Instead of barraging students with attacks, defacements and other noisy intrusions to their networks, the Red team must be more surgical in its operations.

“The first day is all about getting software implants on the students’ systems that can ‘phone home,’ so that later in the competition, after the systems have been secured, the Red team will still have access,” Scaparra added.

As someone who is paid to be one of the “good guys,” Scaparra found being on the hacker team was very reward-ing and fun.

“Without a Red team this competition would lack ex-citement for the students and there would be little focus on actually securing the systems. It is up to the Red team to keep everyone honest,” he said. “If students implement something poorly it is the Red team’s job to prove that it was done insecurely, ill-advised, or whatever the case may be.”

For example, a team might block any IP address that they saw port scanning them. While this sounds logical, it is a flawed approach. A malicious user can spoof the address of

Jeff Bullock takes notes as he plans a strategy for the Red team.


Mike Kozma, Jeff Bullock and Jeff Scaparra give the SSC Atlantic brief to students during a recruiting session at the CCDC. They discussed the innovation program and touched on the many cyber security-related initiatives at SSC Atlantic.

people that need access, thereby blocking innocent people from access. “This actually happened at the competition,” Scaparra said.

He found the most rewarding part of being on the Red team isn’t during the competition but afterwards, when the students come in to discuss their strategies and get the Red team members’ opinions of their performance. “The students are there to learn and compete. The Red team then has the opportunity to consult the individual teams and, in some cases, even ask teams what they were doing if we were hav-ing trouble gaining access to a particular system or network.”

According to Bullock, Scaparra’s involvement with the competitions in the past years has allowed SPAWAR to enter this market to both network SSC Atlantic’s name in cyber, as well as recruit the next and best.

“With respect to my own education and growth, the competitions gave me an opportunity to take the theoretical skills I learned in school to a practical environment. I’ve gone from test-cramming in college, to port-scanning to trojan-planting on the Red teams, and it’s taught me a lot to work with some great professionals from government, military and private industry,” Bullock said.

- Susan Piedfort, Chronicle Editor Mike Kozma takes advantage of competition downtime to share information about SSC Atlantic with prospective employees.


By Holly QuickSponsored by the Office of the Chief

of Naval Operations, Medical Resourc-es, Plans and Policy Division (OPNAV N931), the Navy Medicine Knowledge Management System (NMKMS) began as a research and development (R&D) project to address high-value capability gaps in current Joint Electronic Health Record capabilities, assess the value of data warehousing techniques for data storage and retrieval, and design an open architecture that could be lever-aged by multiple sources with ease of integration.

The goal of NMKMS is to collect the highest quality of casualty care data in an operational setting with the minimum amount of disruption to the healthcare providers. Rather than simply exchanging data files, Navy medicine requires interoperable ap-plications that not only share data, but also leverage computing and storage resources. What is NMKMS?

NMKMS is a data warehouse capability for the collection, stan-dardization, storage and servicing of operational medical data of interest and value to Navy medicine.Data collection

NMKMS accepts multiple data sources, including Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application – Theater (AHLTA-T) encounters, Shipboard Non-tactical Automated Data Processing (SNAP) Automated Medical System (SAMS) 8 and 9 environmental, logistical and medical encounters, and Theater Medi-cal Information Program (TMIP) Com-posite Health Care System (CHCS) Cache (TC2) medical encounters. The encounters are transferred through either the TMIP Framework or SAMS Communicator in an encrypted man-ner to a centralized NMKMS data collection and storage instance (See Figure 1).

Data standardizationAt point of entry into NMKMS, the

data is parsed and each individual data element is compared to the business rules governing that data element. These business rules allow NMKMS to reduce the “apples,” “oranges” and “peaches” to “apples” so the reporting is performed using the standardized data. This apples-to-apples approach accounts for differences in data such as numeric code, capital letters and lower case letters, and converts it to a standard format that can be used for query and reporting purposes.Data storage

Once the data has passed all valida-tion tests and has been transformed according to the business rules, it is then stored in a data warehouse for optimal analysis and reporting. “In the future, the NMKMS data warehouse is envisioned to serve as the collection point and data broker for all authorita-tive sources of Navy and Marine Corps operational medical data. NMKMS will then serve up properly normalized data marts that support critical applications and services to Navy medicine decision makers, including the Navy Surgeon General and combatant command (COCOM) surgeons” said Claudia Kiefer, SSC Atlantic project manager of NMKMS. Servicing of data

NMKMS uses customized data marts that are specific to the report-ing need, which prevent users from directly assessing the data warehouse, and therefore help to protect person-ally identifiable information (PII). Ad-ditionally, these data marts allow for distributed networking of the enterprise components, abstract reporting from data storage, and allow the data model within NMKMS to evolve without breaking third party visualization tools. Benefits of NMKMS

The capabilities of NMKMS offer

great benefits to the field of Navy medi-cine. These benefits include:

• Lower operating costs;• Greater security over the PII within

the data through decreased exposure;• Higher quality data from more

disparate data sources; • Greater accessibility to standard-

ized data;• Reduced application and develop-

ment costs; and • Near real-time reporting capabili-

ties.Solving business problems, creating business opportunities

SSC Atlantic employs agile software development and Lean Six Sigma methodologies within the overarching Department of Defense (DoD) Soft-ware Development Life Cycle (SDLC), using short iterations to break down larger goals. SSC Atlantic practices open and transparent communication with its partners and customers and believes in providing training and support in the adoption and imple-mentation of best practices for agile software development and Lean Six Sigma methodologies within the DoD framework. Most recently, SSC At-lantic has been involved in extending the current NMKMS architecture to include new capabilities, such as the Naval Operational Requirements for Medical Manpower (NORMMan), Op-erational Workload Reporting (OWR) and Epidemic Outbreak Surveillance (EOS). Additionally, SSC Atlantic is pursuing new opportunities to extend NMKMS capabilities in support of a Joint Medical Distance Support and Evacuation (JMDSE) demonstration, and in the integration of Navy Medicine Online (NMO) and NMKMS.Naval Operational Require-ments for Medical Manpower (NORMMan)

NORMMan is a medical manpower

NMKMS offers information superiority to medical decision makers


modeling and simulation capability that resides within the NMKMS archi-tecture. The goal of the NORMMan application is to provide a scenario-driven, predictive model for Navy medical manpower requirements, based on occupational specialty.

NORMMan outputs are used as in-puts in the overarching process of medi-cal staff planning. NORMMan receives data from the Total Force Manpower Management System (TFMMS), with which it performs complex computa-tions and produces appropriate medical manpower predictions. TFMMS tracks more than 50,000 Navy medical billets distributed across approximately 300 medical occupational specialties.

Essential to the NORMMan applica-tion is the algorithm that modifies and clusters these billets into occupational specialties and generates report data. While many billets cluster to obvi-ous specialties, there are also special situations that must be accounted for, such as Navy policy, location-specific situations, education-based constraints and personnel availability issues. The NORMMan application utilizes Drools, a business rule engine, which facilitates the clustering of algorithms and pro-duces the NORMMan models.

The predictions supplied by NORM-

Man will be used by various organiza-tions within the Navy to support for-mulation of the Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP) for the Program Objective Memorandum/Program Review (POM/PR). These predictions are also used to support other medical manpower requirements analyses such as the Medical Readiness Review (MRR) and Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Operational Workload Report-ing (OWR)

The OWR capability that leverages the NMKMS data warehouse archi-tecture provides Navy medicine with information on the Navy and Marine Corps medical workload in operational theaters worldwide. To alleviate the cumbersome task of manually collect-ing, cleansing and collating monthly data from the multiple medical data sources, SSC Atlantic developed a Web-based OWR capability that dis-plays medical workload data of Navy and Marine Corps deployed medical units. Data from the Joint Medical Workstation (JMeWS) and the The-ater Medical Data Store (TMDS) are uploaded into the application where data are dynamically analyzed to pro-vide the user with a series of views of workload information by unit, unit type

and COCOM over time.OWR is currently servicing the

Navy Surgeon General’s requirement for monthly reports on worldwide op-erational medical workload. Epidemic Outbreak Surveil-lance (EOS)

The EOS advanced concept tech-nology demonstration (ACTD) was initiated to deliver a validated, inte-grated, operational biodefense system that accelerates command decisions and improves joint force sustainment. The Epidemic Outbreak Surveillance ACTD’s system-of-systems approach enhances both biodefense operations and operational medicine through the integration of technology and data components that are needed to provide individual patient care on the front end while serving a higher public health/operational need, in real-time, on the back end.

At the request of U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), SSC Atlantic extended the NMKMS architecture and services to provide a data fusion capability for the EOS ACTD that would transform integrated data from existing medical health information systems into decision quality informa-

F i g u r e 1 : NMKMS sup-ports aligned, centralized and o p e r a t i o n a l Navy and Ma-rine Corps data



tion. An EOS-NMKMS test event was conducted to demonstrate an outbreak detection capability that met the EOS program goals using the NMKMS infrastructure.

The EOS-NMKMS test event was conducted to simulate a scenario in-volving influenza outbreaks on the USS Shoup (DDG 86) and the USS Peleliu (LHA 5) over a three-day period. The demonstration utilized simulated patient encounter records that were created using AHLTA-T. The records were imported into the load directory of NMKMS, simulating TMIP’s expe-ditionary framework.

The demonstration record set con-tained data that would cause alerts to be activated on both ships. The re-cords also contained data that would trig-ger the software to notify the local medical department that a reportable event had occurred.

The success of the EOS-NMKMS test event high-lighted the value of a capability that provides for the near real-time environ-mental surveillance, detection and re-porting of disease outbreak.Joint Medical Distance Support and Evacuation (JMDSE)

NMKMS is currently being evalu-ated for use as a platform to support the JMDSE Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD). JMDSE will provide a virtual triage and remote patient monitoring and care capability. The role of NMKMS in this demonstra-tion would be to collect and integrate medical encounter data generated by forward-deployed medical first re-sponders, and deliver custom patient

information displays to remote health-care providers. Integration of Navy Medicine Online (NMO) and NMKMS

NMO currently serves as data bro-ker for Navy medicine, by collecting individual readiness information from legacy Navy medicine data systems, such as SAMS, Dental Common Ac-cess System (DENCAS) and Navy Medical Board Online Tracking System (MEDBOLTS), and transmitting select information to the Medical Readiness Reporting System (MRRS) to support DoD Individual Medical Readiness (IMR) reporting, Defense Health Infor-mation Management System (DHIMS) Force Health Protection and other Navy systems. Additionally, NMO hosts critical applications for specific

Navy Medicine communities of in-terest. Originally built in the 1990s, NMO uses obsolete technology, and a stove-piped architecture that is costly to maintain.

SSC Atlantic is currently embarked in the planning phase to merge NMO and NMKMS capabilities into a com-mon extensible data warehouse archi-tecture that will service the current and future information needs of Navy medicine.

The outcome of this merged NMO/

NMKMS capability will support a reduction of computing and storage hardware, and provide a scalable, extensible solution that will meet the performance requirements of existing and future projects (See Figure 2).

The merger of NMO/NMKMS capa-bilities is aligned with Navy medicine’s strategic goals and is expected to gen-erate the following desired outcomes:

• Provide an enterprise-wide opera-tional Navy medicine data repository;

• Reduce duplication in Navy medi-cine systems;

• Support current and future Navy and Military Health System (MHS) stakeholders;

• Provide data marts for specific stakeholders;

• Support receipt of additional medi-cal data elements that are not currently captured via existing interfaces;

• Leverage exist-ing Navy medicine technology for data normalization, data warehousing and data marts;

• Support cus-tomized reporting;

• Support future applications;

• Provide data curation, resulting in improved data quality; and

• Eliminate stove pipe systems and reduce hardware footprint.

In merging the NMO/NMKMS capabilities, SSC Atlantic will enable enhanced information sharing and knowledge management across Navy medicine, and deliver an extensible data warehouse architecture that pro-vides improved management of Navy Medicine information technology investments, and reduced duplication in Navy medicine systems.

For more information contact Kief-er, project manager of NMKMS at SSC Atlantic, at [email protected].

NMKMSContinued from previous page

Figure 2: Merged NMO/NMKMS capability architecture


SSC Atlantic leadership development

The end is the beginning“Every new beginning comes from some other

beginning’s end.”- Seneca

Roman philosopher, statesman and advisor to Emperor Nero

And so it is with SSC Atlantic’s unique, week-long course for supervisors and managers, the “Leadership Development Course.” The class was delivered in Charleston, Tidewater and New Orleans 18 times for nearly 250 supervisors since the pilot in March 2009, and was a huge success. As the delivery of this class winds down, progress is being made to determine “what’s next” for current supervisors as well as for those who are not in supervisory positions, e.g., project managers, team leaders, aspiring leaders and New Professionals.

“The Leadership Development Course established the baseline for leadership development within the command. Prior to this course, there was no standard leadership develop-ment class for supervisors. Individu-als attended what was available to them, or vendors were contracted to deliver training in pocket areas of the command. There was no consistency throughout the command, nor was the training geared to our specific

environment: addressing issues within NSPS, Navy ERP and CAO,” said Karen Quasny, 8111, who designed and delivered the classes at the request of Charlie Adams, then of 50C. Adams saw a need for the development of the soft skills required of a leader, and worked with Quasny to design a course with meaning and relevance.

The feedback from the initial classes was so positive that Capt. Bruce Urbon, SSC Atlantic commanding officer, signed a memorandum making the course a requirement for all supervisors and managers in SSC Atlantic.

“Military leaders get this material on a regular basis, but we didn’t have anything in place for our civilian leaders,” Urbon said. “The opportunity to get 360-degree feedback and reflect on their personal leadership style, their impact

on others, and the opportunity to share knowledge, expertise, experi-ences, or to discuss current leader-ship challenges with their peers in a confidential and nonattribution setting, creates a terrific learning environment.

“The exercises and case studies are actual SPAWAR situations that we as a command have wrestled with and resolved, so we are also incorporating the ‘lessons learned.’ The course incorporates our Navy values: honor, courage and commit-ment, and reinforces the importance

“...the real value of this training will be determined by the positive changes in

behavior that lead to improved leadership and strengthen the

command.”

At left, a leadership class held in Charleston June 7 to 11 featured participants, from left, Becky Jones, Gerry Allen, Mike Zeigler, Lane Melton, Steve Lariviere, Ron Thomas, Terri Gray, Ken Huffingham, Linda Ward, Odette Foore and Jason Livingston.



The New Orleans class held June 21 to 25 included, from left, Ed Wallace, Jodi Ketry, Kevin Streittmatter, Carlos Polk, Harry Thompson, Cheri Couchis, Jeff Moseley, Gerry Smith, Joan Sharp, Wayne Robinson, Charnelle Brown, Ray Terminie and Gregg Travis.

Photo by Karen Quasny


From left, first row, Virginia Pitts, Joyce Lematty, Eleanor Aldrich; second row, Ralph Sanders, Kath-erine Adams, Debbie Moore, Pam Bell, Cathy Young; third row, Philip Leonard, Jim Barr, Randy Shirley; fourth row, Nnaemeka Nnamani, Jim Gregory and Tom Egbert at-tended the class held March 22 to 26 in Charleston.

Photo by Karen Quasny

of honesty and integrity in all of our decision-making, actions and behaviors,” the captain added.

According to Quasny, who taught leadership development with the Army Management Staff College prior to coming to SPAWAR, the real value of this or any successive train-ing is determined by the changes in behavior that lead to improved leadership practices.

“The definition of learning is a change in behavior,” Quasny stated. “It’s when a participant takes the information from the course, iden-tifies areas for improvement and incorporates changes in behavior as a result.

“However, if a person attends a class, raves about how great it was, but continues to operate in the same manner with no improvements or changes in behavior, there was little or no learning that took place,” she said.

To determine the value to the individual and the organization, a follow-up survey is being sent to course graduates six to nine months after course completion. Individuals are asked to specify the elements of the course that they’ve

applied since completing the course, and whether they made changes to their leadership style as a result of the course.

Feedback from these surveys is being compiled and assessed to de-termine the value of the course to the individual as well as to the command. It will also help establish the direction for future courses.

What does the future hold for long-term leadership development? According to Pamela Bell, head of

Organizational Development and Training Management, 813, this course has been recommended as a key element in the curriculum for the proposed SPAWAR Leadership Academy for emerging and existing leaders across Team SPAWAR.

“We will be delivering this course in San Diego this summer with attendees from HQ/PEO and SSC Pacific

Leadership trainingContinued from previous page

Pictured above from the March 10 to 12 class in Charleston are, seated, from left, Raymond Borne, Kay Swann, Michele McNair, Nancye Kutch and Jennifer Watson Clark; standing, Bill Somma, Will Johnston, Roger Daugherty, John Chap and Michael Shafer.



with co-instructors from across SPAWAR,” Bell said. “We look forward to working across the organization to design a full range of leadership development curriculum to affect everyone from the newest employee to the most experienced engineers, technicians and professionals,” she added.

“Proper training is critical to ensuring we deliver the right services to our customers, to reducing costs and to enhanc-

Posing with class facilitator Karen Quasny, clockwise from top left, are Michael Olson, Brian Toth, Richard Paquin, Pamela Swiderski, Thomas Tucker, Joseph Wardach, Karen Lehman, Douglas Mueller, Gerald Dew, Donna Collier, YNCS Michael Brown, Raymond Chapell and center, Gail Shumate, from the class in St. Juliens Creek April 5 through 9.

Pictured above are the attendees from a Charleston class held May 12 through 14, from left, Karl Baker, Daniel Kilcoyne, Kristine Penninger, Jimmy Gerald, Sam Brad-ford, Michael Johnston, Frank McAlhany, Rich Hooks, Joe Nitz, Daniela Pessagno and Norris Mitchell.

Photo by Karen QuasnyPhoto provided

At left, a leader-ship class held in Charleston May 17 to 21 featured, from left, Mark Bienz, Tom Reiff, Dar-renTurner, Greg McHone, Lori Hol-lister, Jeanne Leya, Steve Woods, Mark Price, Ken Ayers, Terry Sprague, Pau la Somers , Tony Jones, Chris-ty Hammett, Willie Cantrell and Ron Alley.


ing morale through the entire organization,” Urbon said. “The development of managerial skills is one of the great-est investments we can make, both in terms of productivity gains and the retention of valuable employees,” he added.

According to SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christo-pher Miller, “The future of this command is dependent on its leaders. This course is only the beginning for developing the next generation of leaders to take this command into the future.”


SSC Atlanticreaches out for Lab Day

SSC Atlantic hosted 14 events for schools in the districts of Charleston County, Berkeley County and Dorchester 2 County May 3 through 7 as part of the center’s outreach program and in conjunction with President Barack Obama’s National Lab Day.

SSC Atlantic engineers visited Garrett Academy of Technology, North Charleston High School, Zucker Middle School of Science, St. Stephens Middle School, River Oaks Middle School and Westview Middle School. These schools are in districts that have entered Educational Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with SSC Atlantic.

While at the schools, the visiting SPAWARriors provided interactive demonstrations, talked about the mission of SSC Atlantic, discussed the importance of education, and created an appreciation for careers in science, technology,

Above, Alicia Hilton and Jack Ellis of SSC Atlantic work with Tammy Lamon o f R iver Oaks Middle School on an experiment at the school. Below, D a v i d H a t c h e r speaks to a class at Garrett Academy of Technology.


Outreach


engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Demonstrations on topics such as 3-D modeling CAD, moncrete modules and chemistry/PH scales showed the practical applications of science and math concepts the students study. SSC Atlantic engineers also told the students about innovative products that have been developed to support today’s warfighter.

Participation in National Lab Day events was a small part of SSC Atlantic’s outreach program. SSC Atlantic volunteers work with educators and students to bring discovery-based science experiences to students in grades K-12 throughout the school year. The center reached out through numerous school visits, career fairs, Gussie Green Computer Lab, Ma-terials World Modules, Tabula Digita, Project Lead the Way and a variety of robotics demonstrations and competitions throughout the Tricounty area. The events promote hands-on learning while building local communities of support that will foster ongoing collaborations among volunteers, students and educators.

“SPAWAR Atlantic is committed to fostering ongoing relationships among scientists, engineers, students and educators to motivate and inspire young people to excel in STEM disciplines,” said SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christopher Miller. “STEM professionals played an impor-tant role in the success of this first-ever event by working

Above, Jay Cuttino talks to a class at Zucker Middle School of Science. Below, Jack Ellis checks measurements in a lab at River Oaks Middle School.


Photo by Michelle Rehr-Matash



Lab weekContinued from previous page

At the top, David Kappel tells a class at Zucker Middle School of Science about career opportunities at SSC At-lantic, while above, Dr. Suzanne Huerth speaks to a class at St. Stephens Middle School. At right, Marquita Priester gives a presentation to a science class at Westview Middle School.

Photos by Michelle Rehr-Matash

with educators and students in grades K-12.” The National Lab Day initiative was supported by both

President Barack Obama and The Honorable Zachary J. Lemnios, Director, Defense Research and Engineering for the Department of Defense. The National Defense Education Program (NDEP) has recruited the help of the Department of Defense to promote STEM education across the country. SSC Atlantic partners with NDEP in a variety of programs that are aimed at interactive learning and changing the way young people view STEM and its impact in their daily lives.

“SSC Atlantic has had a successful year with STEM outreach activities, but there is so much more to be done in order to expand our outreach efforts,” said Shanda Johnson, SSC Atlantic outreach program manager. Those interested in volunteering should call (843) 218-4497.


Glen Hoffman of Code 50CE0 and David Hatcher of Code 5349 visited Westview Elementary School in Goose Creek for a career day in February.

They met with fourth and fifth graders for robotics demonstrations, to talk about what SSC Atlantic does and to discuss the practical applications of engineering and science concepts.

Students who viewed the demos sent thank you notes to Hoffman and Hatcher. Overwhelming response to the robotics demonstration was that it was “really cool.” Jared thanked Hoffman and Hatcher for “... making us learn a lot.”

The kids were also impressed with the mission of SSC Atlantic and what electrical engineers do, which prompted Gibson to ask, “... when do you think I could apply for a job?”

Nirlep said, “I thank you because you protect us from danger and keep us safe,” while Nicholas encouraged Hoffman to shred his note “five times, and burn it” after reading.

SSC Atlantic’s Outreach Program addresses the na-tionwide decline in students’ pursuit of careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). SSC Atlantic is reaching out to elementary, middle and high schools to encourage interest for the students in STEM careers at an early age. Those interested in volunteering during the upcoming school year can call the SSC Atlantic outreach program manager at (843) 218-4497.

Westview Elementarystudents thank

SSC Atlantic visitors


SSC Atlantic employees garnerFEA awards

Two SSC Atlantic employees and a team of individuals were honored as first runners up in three categories of the 2009 Greater Charleston Area Federal Executive Association (FEA) Employee of the Year awards.

A capacity crowd filled the Naval Weapons Station Red-bank Club May 19 to honor federal civilian employees and uniformed military personnel in nine different categories. SSC Atlantic employees celebrated as Diane Owens, Calvin Howard and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Information Assurance Support team won first runner up honors in their respective categories.

Owens, a journalist in Code 853, was first runner up in the Trade/Craft category. Owens’ communications efforts were praised as providing the “glue en-abling collaboration and consoli-dation of SSC Atlantic employees up and down the East Coast, as well as other operating loca-tions all over the world.” Owens developed and is the sole writer/editor for the Chronicle Lite, SSC Atlantic’s monthly internal communication product used to disseminate policies, procedures, initiatives and employee recognition. Owens also developed poster campaigns, Web postings and other communications tools to inform the workforce of major initiatives such as Navy ERP, Compe-tency Aligned Organization (CAO) and National Security Personnel System (NSPS).

Howard, a senior contract specialist in Code 2253, was first runner up in the Outstanding Scientific/Professional Employee Award. His responsibilities in-clude acquisition planning, source selection development, techni-cal evaluation facilitation and the award and administration of many complex actions. He was appointed lead contract negotia-tor for critical customers such as the MRAP vehicles and Tactical

Interoperable Ground Data Link (TIGDL) II systems pro-grams, Naval Warfare Development Command (NWDC), and the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) development project. In 2009 he administered approximately 15 contracts, with a total estimated value of $800 million, and had pre-award responsibilities for ap-proximately 10 procurements with an estimated total value of $1 billion.

SSC Atlantic’s IRS Information Assurance Support team was first runner up in the team award. Team members are Damon Shivvers, Robert Baker, Jason Brooks, David Brown, Brian Diana, Stephen Held, John Kiser, Shawn Hill,William Magill and Ronald Riel, all of Code 58260; Andy Deese, Jack Vander Pol and Bryan Wilson, all of Code 58220; Kyle Stone of Code 58250; and Arthur Lazarow of Code 58210.

During 2009 the team ensured the confidentiality, integ-rity and availability of personally identifiable information and tax information for every U.S. taxpayer. By accredit-ing IRS information systems responsible for processing and storing an immense amount of the nation’s personally identifiable information, the team performed on the front line of cyberspace national defense. They conducted 94 se-curity testing and evaluation events in various IRS locations across America and 134 Continuous Monitoring reviews for the 2009 Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) reporting year.

Featured speaker for the awards ceremony was Medal of Honor recipient Maj. Gen. James E. Livingston, USMC (Ret.) In his address the general thanked the assembled employees for their dedication to their jobs, organizations and country. “A great nation begins with government of the people, staffed by great people achieving great things,” the general said. “These award nominees have proven they reached a level of excellence, and they have demonstrated their unwavering support to government service.”

Federal employees from the 315th Airlift Wing, 437th Airlift Wing, 628th Air Base Wing, Naval Consolidated Brig,

Owens

Howard

IRS Information Assurance Support team

Honors


U.S. Coast Guard Sector Charleston, Naval Health Clinic Charleston, U.S. Coast Guard Naval En-gineering Support Unit Charleston, U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Law Enforcement, Naval Nuclear Power Train-ing Command, Nuclear Power Training Unit, Naval Weapons Station, Charleston, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Charleston District, and Ralph H. Johnson Vet-erans Administration Medical Center competed -- along with SSC Atlantic.

Awards were presented by Livingston, Tim Shaw and Cmdr. William Schmitz, co-chairs of the Greater Charleston Area FEA; and Thetyka Husser, representing South Carolina Federal Credit Union, which awarded a $100 check to the winners in each category.

Since 1967 the Greater Charleston FEA has been sponsor-ing the Employee of the Year program as a means of publi-cizing the high caliber of civilian and military employees of the federal service. Tom Crawford, chief meteorologist for WCIV News, served as master of ceremonies for the awards luncheon for the eighth year in a row.

- Susan Piedfort, Chronicle EditorMaj. Gen. James E. Livingston, USMC (Ret.) addresses the awards luncheon attendees.

A record-breaking number of people gathered in the Redbank Club for this year’s FEA awards luncheon.

Tom Crawford of WCIV News served as master of ceremonies.



TECThink

SSC Atlantic took part in the Sixth Annual Homeland Security Innovation Conference held May 5 through 7 at the Charleston area convention center. Presented by the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce’s ThinkTEC initiative, the conference centered on “Counter Terrorism: Guarding the Homeland.”

SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon spoke at the conference, noting that such gatherings “let us leverage our public/private partnerships, technological advances and business opportunities as we find innovation solutions to ensure homeland security.”

SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christopher Miller also spoke at the conference, and demonstrations featured a va-riety of SSC Atlantic projects and innovations.



By Clark PierceEditor, Jax Air News

SSC Atlantic’s Aviation Command and Control (AC2) Engineering Division is providing a temporary air traffic Control (ATC) tower at Naval Air Station Jacksonville while the Air Operations Facility is being upgraded.

The NAS Jacksonville control tower and radar room were originally build in the 1940s and are being upgraded as part of the National Airspace System Modernization (NASMod) program. SSC Atlantic’s AC2 Engineering Division is the Navy’s lead field activity for the NAS Mod program, a joint Department of Defense/Federal Aviation Administration effort to modernize the nation’s ATC systems.

The NAS Mod Program installation at NAS Jacksonville is replacing aging ATC systems with state-of-the art systems to include a new digital airport surveillance radar (DASR), a new software-driven air traffic controller display system designated the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System (STARS), and the Navy unique information man-agement system designated the Video Information Display System (VIDS).

Soon to be the norm at all shore-based Navy and Marine Corps approach control facilities, STARS includes aircraft status and flight plan information, plus surveillance position information, sensor identification, aircraft beacon code, filters, altitude, maps, range marks and weather information.

SSC Atlantic joined forces with Naval Facilities and Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Southeast and the NAS Jacksonville Air Operations Department in 2008 to plan the renovation of the facility. The plans incorporated a scheme to utilize certain operational spaces while making repairs and improvements concurrently. The resulting project accomplishes needed building repairs and upgrades and makes building modifications required to support the new ATC equipment.

The temporary facilities provided by SSC Atlantic are outfitted with ATC systems that allow the NAS Jacksonville Air Operations Department to continue to control air traf-fic while the existing ATC Tower and Radar ATC Facility are being renovated. Once the building is renovated, SSC Atlantic will install new cabinetry and ATC systems and will work closely with the NAS Jacksonville Air Operations Department to transition the Air Traffic Controllers from the temporary facilities into the newly renovated and outfitted Air Traffic Control Facility operating on new, digital state-of-the-art equipment.

SSC Atlantic providestemporary ATC for NAS Jacksonville

At top, the temporary control tower is dwarfed by the original tower. Above, the temporary control tower as seen from the 109-foot vantage point of the original tower. Below, AC1 Randy Cody and AC3 Brett Lewis manage air traffic from the 40-foot high temporary tower using equipment moved from the original tower currently being renovated.


By Zaid YacuSSC Atlantic Spectrum Manager

In accordance with U.S. naval activity guidelines, SSC Atlantic must submit all of its radio spectrum frequency requests to National Telecommunication & Information Administration (NTIA) via The Navy and Marine Corps Spectrum Center (NMSC) in Alexandria, Va.

NMSC has recently informed all Navy and Marine Corps bases, activities and facilities, including SSC Atlantic, that pursuant to NTIA and DoD policies, it will no longer accept frequency requests submitted for radios that are not already government certified. A radio frequency (RF) transmitting equipment must have a pre-approved DD Form 1494 and a valid Joint Frequency (J/F 12) number before a frequency request can be submitted for that radio to NMSC.

A DD Form 1494 is used to document the technical characteristics of the radio equipment, such as frequen-cies of operation, transmitter power, emission type, tuning range and methods, modulation tech-niques, harmonics, immediate frequen-cy (IF) selectivity, sensitivity and oth-er information.

The submission of the DD Form 1494 is done at the four stages of de-velopment of the radio equipment.

• A “conceptual” 1494 (Stage-1) is submitted as early as possible within the development effort.

• An “experimental” 1494 (Stage-2) is submitted before the development of any prototype version of the system or equipment. If supportable, the approval of a Stage-2 1494 generally authorizes limited production for research and experimental purposes. An experimental 1494 should be submitted before Milestone B.

• A “developmental” 1494 (Stage-3) is required by Mile-stone C and generally authorizes an increase in production, providing that a positive spectrum supportability determina-tion has been made.

• An “operational” 1494 (Stage-4) is submitted before full production. The acquisition of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) and non-developmental item (NDI) spectrum-dependent equipment or systems by the Navy generally begins with the submittal of a Stage-4 1494.

DD Form 1494 can be downloaded from http://www.

dtic.mil/whs/directives/infomgt/forms/eforms/dd1494-1.pdf.NMSC and NTIA want to enforce this policy in order to

build an accurate and a valid radio equipment certification database. The radio equipment certification database is used to produce accurate spectrum analysis.

Most of the facilities and radios operated by SSC Atlantic personnel will not be affected by the current NMSC/NTIA policy; however, some SSC Atlantic projects and radios may be impacted, and include those that use old equipment that was never certified, radio equipment that was purchased and used but doesn’t have detailed technical specification and manufacturer’s data of the equipment, and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment that has not been certified.

It is highly recommended that all SPAWAR engineers identify any RF transmitting equipment that is used for testing, ensure that the equipment has a government certi-fication, and submit a new DD Form 1494 application for any radio that does not have a government certification. SSC

Atlantic engineers should do the same when designing, de-veloping, producing or procuring radio equipment that uses the RF spectrum. The DD Form 1494 takes a very long time to process. Therefore, it is very prudent to submit a new DD Form 1494 applica-tion or modify an ex-isting one, if needed, as soon as possible. The data on the DD

Form 1494 application must be accurate in order for the application to go through the process smoothly.

SSC Atlantic personnel must not purchase any radio transmitting equipment if they don’t have access to the equipment’s technical specifications which are required on the DD Form 1494 application. NMSC will reject a DD Form 1494 application if it is not filled out correctly or is missing data.

SSC Atlantic personnel must not field any radio equip-ment to other military bases, shore sites or ships if the equipment is not government-certified and requires usage of the RF spectrum in order to operate and function correctly.

Any COTS equipment that is brought onto Naval Weap-ons Station, Charleston for demo purposes must have its own FCC frequency license with it before it is allowed to operate.

SSC Atlantic personnel can also “borrow” a frequency already assigned to SSC Atlantic with approval.

Stricter policy for RF spectrum usage


To comply with calendar year 2011 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) requirements, SSC Atlantic’s Code 83W in the National Capital Region was tasked with reducing its workspace by nearly half.

To cut its original square footage of more than 70,000, a transition team evaluated existing infrastructure capac-ity, held weekly meetings and planned construction. They oversaw the installation of new voicemail, data cables, purging files, accessing equipment, accessing furniture and moving more than 150 personnel in increments of 15 per week.

The reduction in space took 120 days from start to finish.

The team was also tasked with moving Computer Lab 306 to Lab 429, which involved coordinating the move of equipment and telephones, upgrading the electrical power, installing another air handler unit to support the existing unit and adding computer equipment.

To accommodate eight additional personnel, Computer Lab 206 was converted into a like-for-like infrastructure,

From left, front row, transition team members Linda Herbert, Lucille Owens, Ruth Campfield, Veronica Lucas; back row, Bernard Evans and Kirdell Rice Green.

which required coordinating with contractors to paint, install new carpet and set up systems furniture.

In upgrading the additional electrical power, 83W coordinated with the electricians to determine the load capacity of existing computer labs.

This move also involved attending weekly Red Zone meetings with base tenants to determine move progres-sion and hindrances.

Thanks to the dedication, tireless efforts and a positive “can do” attitude by the team, the moves were completed in a timely fashion.

Code 83W reduces byhalf its footprint in National Capital Region

SSC Atlantic is now on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/SPAWARSYSCENATLANTIC. The page was launched to publicize activities of interest to the public, such as major accomplishments, participation in industry events and com-munity outreach efforts.

On May 19, the SSC Atlantic Daily News blog was es-tablished to provide a convenient, one-stop daily news site for all SSC Atlantic employees. The blog is located at blog.spawar.navy.mil/atlanticnews.

Employees are encouraged to make the SSC Atlantic Daily News blog their browser home page and check it each morning. Information employees previously shared via all hands e-mails can now be sent to SSC LANT Daily News (listed in the NMCI Global Address List.)

In addition to providing information and links to events and announcements (VIP visitors, supplies/equipment re-quested and offered, etc.) and Chronicle and Chronicle Lite articles, the blog has links to Navy ERP, MyBiz and other frequently used Web sites. Users can get news, record daily time and take care of other business from a central location.

SSC Atlantic on Facebook,follow the Daily News blog


Former SCC Charleston employee Kristi L. Engelman defended her doctoral thesis (on the influence of the Tp’ ligand on reactions of platinum) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill March 5.

She will conduct post-doctoral research on catalytic oxygen atom transfer as part

Former SPAWARriorEngelman defends doctoral thesis

of the Center for Enabling New Technolo-gies through Catalysis (CENTC) at North Carolina State University later this year. Engelman is president of the Association of Chemistry Graduate Students at UNC.

A daughter of SSC Atlantic’s David Engelman and wife Sandi, Kristi holds a degree in inorganic chemistry from Furman University. The James Island High School class valedictorian worked at then-SSC Charleston in the summers of 2002 and 2005 in the contracts division. Kristi Engelman

By Lilly MillsThe storyboard for the Continuous Process Improvement

(CPI) event “SSC Atlantic Hostile Area Deployment – Mili-tary and Contractor” was recently selected as one of five winners for the Department of the Navy (DoN) Storyboard Competition.

Storyboards provide a quick glance at a CPI event or proj-ect. Typically, a storyboard includes metrics, tools used and a short narrative describing the problem and improvements.

A total of 29 storyboards were entered in the competition

to represent various commands. Five winners were selected for the Navy and Marine Corps, respectively.

SSC Atlantic’s storyboard was showcased during the Department of Defense Symposium held in Lansdowne, Va., in June

Krista Shiver (Black Belt), Cmdr. (Sel) Jim Hadley (Green Belt), Jane Dingus (Command Specified Mission Destination Lead), Antoinette Montgomery (Deployment Manager) and the entire Hostile Area Deployment Team were involved in the storyboard and the CPI effort.

CPI storyboard wins in Navy competitionFrom left, Cmdr. Jim Hadley, Katie Keisler, Jackie Holcomb, Tim Covey, Bethany Adams, Jane Dingus, Antoinette Montgomery and Krista Shiver.

Photo by Sherri Von Behren


The Honorable Zachary Lemnios, Director of Defense Research and Engineering, Chief Technology Officer for the Department of Defense, right, receives a brief in the ATC Facility of SSC Atlantic during a visit April 13. Lemnios was hosted by SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon, second from left, and Technical Director Christopher Miller.

Honorary Commanders from the Cobb County (Georgia) Chamber of Commerce pose in the atrium of Bldg. 3147 in Charleston during a visit to SSC Atlantic May 13. The group received a command brief from SSC Atlantic Com-manding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon, then viewed M-ATV vehicles in a staging area on the Charleston campus. The

Honorary Commanders program is a cooperative effort of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps which gives community and business lead-ers the opportunity to learn more about military activities, their impact on the economy and various aspects of the national defense system.

Honorary Commanders see SSC Atlantic capabilitiesPhoto by Susan Piedfort


Top S&T official forDefense Departmentvisits SSC Atlantic

Visitors


Lt. Gen. John F. Kelly, USMC, Commander, Marine Forces Re-serve and Commander, Marine Forces North, tours the MRAP C4ISR integration facility Feb. 22. Kelly, center, was joined by, from left, Program Manager for MRAP/M-ATV Integration Joe Rodgers, Decision Superiority Portfolio Manager Kevin McGee, SSC Atlantic Technical Direc-tor Christopher Miller and SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon in the MRAP integration facility. Urbon also presented the command brief, and gave the general an overview of SSC Atlantic’s USMC proj-ects and current C4I consulting support for MARFORRES HQ Federal City. Photo by Joe Bullinger

Marine Forces Reserve Commander Kelly visits


Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) stu-dents from Detachment 295 at the University of Louisville get a brief on SSC Atlantic air traffic control (ATC) operations -- and a bird’s eye view of the Charleston campus -- from the ATC tower during a visit March 19. The cadets also received a command overview from SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon, toured the MRAP/M-ATV vehicle staging area, and toured other parts of the ATC facility.

Birds’ eye viewfor visitingUSAF cadets

Visitors


Pete Ward, left, SSC Atlantic’s lead project engineer for MRAP/M-ATV integration, briefs Rear Adm. Tom Traaen, second from left, Vice Director for Logistics, J-4, Joint Staff, Washington, D.C., during the admiral’s recent visit to the MRAP/M-ATV vehicle integration facility. Traaen, along with Col. Chris Hill, USAF, Maintenance Divi-sion Chief, J4; and David Hansen, Deputy Program Manager, Joint Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicle Program, visited SSC Atlantic to discuss SSC Atlantic’s MRAP integration operations and SPAWAR’s role in supporting the MRAP program. At right is Capt. Bruce Urbon, SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer.


Traaen views integration ops

Vice Adm. David “Jack” Dorsett, Deputy CNO for Information Dominance (N2/N6) and Direc-tor of Naval Intelligence, left, is briefed by Joe Rodgers, SSC Atlantic’s lead project engineer for MRAP/M-ATV integration (back to camera), as Capt. Bruce Urbon, SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer, right, listens in during the admiral’s visit to SSC Atlantic April 14. While in the Lowcountry the admiral also saw demonstra-tions of a variety of SSC Atlantic programs.Photo by Joe Bullinger

Dorsettvisits


SSC Atlantic ex-expatriates reunite

Photo provided

On April 17, former team members of the SSC Atlantic European Division reunited for a barbeque at the home of Dave Arellanes in Summerville, S.C., after years of not seeing each other.

This group of employees started the legacy of the Euro-pean Division, which has since grown to accommodate the joint warfighter in ways that are immeasurable considering the size of the division.

It all began more than 10 years ago when the com-mand sent Kevin Holcomb to Stuttgart, Germany, as a lone ranger, representing SSC Atlantic. After Holcomb came Dave Arellanes, and then Terry Simpson. When the command decided to staff an office, Jim Condon was se-lected to become the division head and build a team. The staff started out with less than 10 employees in Stuttgart, Germany, and within a five-year time frame expanded to five different countries, Germany, England, Spain, Italy

and Bahrain. The two main offices were located in Stuttgart and

Heidelberg, Germany. At its peak, the European Division staffed close to 70 personnel, with the majority of the employees located in Heidelberg (led by Mark Held and later by Greg Sidwell).

Over the years, the European Division has witnessed the realignment of personnel, office closures and the change in leadership, but the bond of the employees has remained unbreakable -- which is common to individuals located overseas. Most of these individuals are now located at SSC Atlantic in Charleston, S.C., but others have ventured on to different locations and job opportunities.

But these SPAWARriors agree there is nothing that makes work more enjoyable than being part of a great team and cherishing it.

- By Maria Hendricks, Dave Arellanes and Mark Held

Former members of the SSC Atlantic European Office pose with their families at the Arellanes home. They include Mark Held, Ernesto Brux, Ken McCullough, Sherman Pope, Todd Yates, Robby Thomas, Dean Heat-

herdale, Dave Arellanes, Jim Condon, Maria and Bill Hendricks, Greg Lancaster, Greg Sidwell. Attended but not pictured: Klaus Krane, Ryan Gunst and their spouses.

The Final Word


We are now soliciting submissions from SSC Atlantic employees for next issue’s contest.

The Employee Services Association will offer the winner a choice of a command coin, thermal mug, cookbook (if available) or $5 credit on another logo item.

MWR will offer a certificate for a free lunch in the Cooper River Cafe to the winner. Send your best shot to [email protected] or [email protected].

Send in your best shot

And the winner is...

This issue we had a record number of outstanding submissions for the SSC Atlantic Chronicle photo contest.

Thank you to all who submitted!


From left, Mike Beaumeir, vice president of Suffolk Construction Company; Lt. Cmdr. Stephen Fichter of Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southeast; SSC Atlantic Technical Director Christopher Miller; SPAWARSYSCOM Deputy Commander Rod Smith; SPAWARSYSCOM Commander Rear Adm. Michael Bachmann; SSC Atlantic Commanding Officer Capt. Bruce Urbon; North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey; and Peter Wertimer of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce break ground for SSC Atlantic’s new Consolidated Engineering Facility. See story on page 14.

Documents

Summer 2010 The Chronicle 1 - U.S. Navy Hosting 2010 The Chronicle 1 4 Chairman, Joint Chiefs visits The nation’s highest ranking military officer visits to thank the SSC Atlantic