ESC personnel at Offutt receive honor

  • Published
  • By Patty Welsh
  • 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. --  Electronic Systems Center personnel located at Offutt AFB, Neb., are part of a team that was recently honored with a Joint Functional Component Command - Global Strike 2011 annual award in the "Team" category.

The Integrated Strategic Planning and Analysis Network program's Mission Planning and Analysis System Modernization Team works to develop and maintain global strike planning systems in support of U.S. Strategic Command's deterrence mission. This is the second year in a row the MPAS Modernization Team has won the JFCC-Global Strike annual team award.

"This team is a mix of program management personnel and the customer - the functional manager," said Steven Wert, program executive officer for Theater Command and Control and director of the C2ISR Directorate. "It's an honor for them to be recognized with this award from the user."

The ISPAN program, valued at $1.1 billion, consists of multiple applications for our nation's nuclear and conventional mission planning and analysis systems, as well as a net-centric, strategic course of action development tool for Force Application Planning and Joint Operations Planning.

Rear Adm. Frederick Roegge, Joint Functional Component Command - Global Strike deputy commander, thanked Wert for "the dedication of your on-site program office" and praised the team's performance.

One area the ISPAN MPAS team was recognized for was forming a cross functional team of engineers and systems managers to identify a strategy for modernization of this important work.

"The ISPAN MPAS team always goes that extra mile," said Peggy Kowalczyk, JFCC-Global Strike/JF6 director. "They developed new processes and strategies in order to garner funding and reduce costs."

The team's work paid off too, with a plus-up of $12 million for the program from U.S. Strategic Command, along with $7 million from the Joint Staff Combatant Commander's Initiative Fund.

Through detailed design and collaboration with other key STRATCOM modernization efforts, the team also eliminated more than $70 million in future development costs.

Another area the team excelled in was implementing new communication procedures. In just three weeks they developed a plan to validate requirements across the MPAS portfolio.

In addition, the team confronted head-on the challenge of virtualization within an enterprise architecture while avoiding duplication with other USSTRATCOM projects.

"The MPAS II is now considered the model project for efficient coordination," said Kowalczyk. "In addition to coordination with the Air Force, the team detailed both near-term and long-term strategies for integration with the DISA [Defense Information Systems Agency] network."

The team worked to create an experimentation test bed for MPAS II that will provide significant risk reduction of the development effort.

Because of the team's efforts, the USSTRATCOM commander identified MPAS modernization as the solution to his number one issue on the 2012 Integrated Priority List.

ESC's ISPAN team at Offutt consists of 70 personnel that develop, acquire, field and sustain the program. The personnel, led by Stacy Furcini, are co-located with the operational users supporting USSTRATCOM's missions for global strike, missile defense and information operations.

"This team is truly deserving of this award," said Roegge. "This award recognizes the effectiveness of our close Program and Functional Manager collaboration which is essential to the Global Strike mission."