Battle Management PEO provides organization overview and update

  • Published
  • By Patty Welsh
  • 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs
LEXINGTON, Mass. --  The program executive officer for Battle Management presented an overview of his organization, an outlook for the upcoming year and current trends for the portfolio during the Hanscom Representatives Association meeting Sept. 27 at Waxy O'Connor's.

One message Steve Wert highlighted was that especially in today's challenging budget environment, things are not business as usual.

"You will see improved resource management," he said. "We are required to have affordability constraints in our programs. These are not the old days; now if there is cost growth, we're just going to stop or reduce program content."

Wert also emphasized that senior Air Force acquisition leaders' priorities include getting "high priority programs right and keep on track..." and that he was heartened to see two of his programs - the Air Operations Center 10.2 and the Three-Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar - on this list.

The PEO said the senior leaders consider these command and control core capabilities to be very important to the Air Force.

He added the Air Force is moving to recapitalization over modernization; however, that only has a limited impact on the Battle Management portfolio.

While discussing leadership within his organization, Wert told the audience they are not figureheads or oversight; they are directly engaged and responsible for success of their programs.

Regarding trends, he said they are working toward increasing competition and strategic contracting, including the use of multiple award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts.

"This matters to industry," Wert said. "The more we compete, the better the opportunities are for you."

The new structure under the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center was another topic he spoke about.

All the various PEOs under LCMC are working together, Wert said. There are very real dependencies between the PEOs, such as mission planning as part of the path for the KC-46 and the Dismount Detection Radar as a part of the Air Force intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission.

He also spoke about the change to acquisition strategies and decisions due to the fact that the PEOs now have full life cycle responsibility and therefore need to think about their programs through sustainment.

Should cost initiatives was another area he covered.

"One hundred percent of my programs are required to identify should cost initiatives and I'm pushing for substantial ones," the PEO said.

Battle Management program managers are looking at where savings can be made, such as with limiting engineering change orders. Wert said that by using the initiatives, Battle Management has projected savings of $340 million across their Future Years Defense Program, although he said much would translate to cost avoidance.

"It's the right thing to do," he said.

He said Battle Management is "pretty relentless" and has earned a reputation for aggressively moving programs forward. In fact, Wert said he often tells his personnel, "We're not stopping until someone stops us."

Wert closed out his talk by showing off the new Battle Management logo and patch which reads: "Can Do/Will Do."