Defense Department turns to ESC to lead way on NextGen

  • Published
  • By Chuck Paone
  • 66th Air Base Wing Public Affairs Office
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. (AFNS) --  Dr. Tim Rudolph, the Electronic Systems Center's chief technology officer, has been named the Defense Department's lead architect for a federal initiative known as the Next Generation Air Transportation System.

The center's 653rd Electronic Systems Wing here, which has a lot of experience with NextGen, will join Doctor Rudolph to help propel this effort. The 653rd ESW will provide the direct support and much of the programmatic expertise needed to assist Doctor Rudolph.

Earlier in the decade, Congress faced estimates that domestic air transportation volume would triple by 2025. Congress directed the Departments of Transportation, Defense, Commerce and Homeland Security, as well as NASA and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, to work together on this issue. This led to the creation of NextGen, which seeks to transform America's air transportation system.

ESC has played a leading role since NextGen's inception, which made it a natural choice for filling this critical role, said Mr. St. Sauveur of the 653rd ELSW staff.

According to Ron Mason, the director of the 653rd ELSW, NextGen is directly relevant to the center and its wing activities.

"It represents net-centric command and control in the truest sense," he said. "ESC has a lot of the resident expertise that's needed for NextGen, in terms of air traffic control and landing systems and also net-centric operations. We've also been heavily involved in early efforts, including technology initiatives and demonstrations, which helped jumpstart the whole process."

Doctor Rudolph will take on these duties as lead architect while still functioning as the center's full-time chief technology officer. He has already established some clear priorities.

"We need to unify joint service inputs, leverage architecture, data strategies and program of record products to make NextGen successful," he said.

Air Force officials, which serve as DOD's lead agents for NextGen, established a schedule in mid-July and tasked the Air Force Materiel Command with providing, within 30 days, a recommendation for a DOD NextGen chief architect. With that step accomplished, the command and Doctor Rudolph's team can begin focusing on the next three steps outlined in the July 15 Air Force memorandum.

By about mid-September, Air Force officials want a process in place to catalog research, development and acquisition activities and programs having NextGen applicability. Within another month, the team should develop a preliminary listing of those activities and programs. By mid-November, Air Force officals hope to have a comprehensive listing of activities and programs that have NextGen applicability across DOD, as well as a synchronized roadmap to facilitate the transition and/or transfer of appropriate technologies between the DOD, other federal agencies and the private sector, according to the memo.

"NextGen is an air transportation system, not an air traffic system," Mr. St. Sauveur said in August 2007, when the center began working directly with Air Force and national program leaders. "That's because it's far more comprehensive. It's about air traffic, but also about safety, security, weather, mobility, efficiency and accounting for expansion needs."

In the Dec. 28, 2007 memorandum that instructed Air Force officials to take the lead, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England wrote of NextGen's criticality to DOD.

"DOD must participate in the NextGen interagency partnership in a cohesive, authoritative manner," he wrote.

For the Air Force and the other services, participating in NextGen is about ensuring that "we'll be fully integrated with the civil aviation community, in terms of policy, procedures and technology, so that we can perform our mission, as needed, whether in 2009 or in 2025," Mr. Mason said.

Tthe team is working to set up meetings between Dr. Rudolph and members of the Joint Planning and Development Office, which is coordinating the full U.S. government effort. Other meetings, which build on established inter-service relationships, are also being arranged.

"I'm looking forward to a truly collaborative effort among the services and shaping a consistent message between DOD, other federal agencies and industry," Doctor Rudolph said. "I think we bring significant lessons learned from building out the Global Information Grid, Community of Interest approaches, and leveraging applied innovation to meet exactly the right challenge and avoid unnecessary redundancy across key stakeholders."