Army Materiel Command

In my position with the Army Materiel Command, I actually was responsible for several other programs that covered many of the Army’s core functions for communications and signal. One of the Army’s major functions is Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR). Absent the actual purchase of weapons system the second most important function that needs to be performed is controlling those systems via communications. The Army Materiel Command is responsible for the issuing and repair of all equipment used by the Army and as the logistics arm of the Army; this requires a complicated and distributed network across the world. The command does over 50 billion dollars a year in business with most …show more content…
In evaluating the situation, it was easy to see that the Coast Guard was technically disadvantaged. At this time, the Coast Guard IT infrastructure consisted of a custom designed workstation, sever and network. It was ahead of its time and offered the capability of unclassified agency wide e-mail and file sharing, and in the early 90s this was far beyond other services. The Coast Guard did not have a classified network, but did have some standalone systems at the collateral level (secret). It was clear that in order to meet the mandate of classified information sharing with other agencies, that I would clearly have to develop a system that could support the Coast Guard and meet DoD, federal law enforcement and intelligence community systems rules and requirements. This was a major undertaking as the Coast Guard did not have anything remotely close to an infrastructure that could support anything of this magnitude. My first action was to develop a program management plan that would capture all the intelligence requirements across the service, then develop a plan forward to secure funding for the program. I met with all the senior intelligence officers across the country and briefed them on the plan and got their approval. The Coast Guard Intelligence …show more content…
I quickly capitalized on the Navy’s request for Coast Guard support and based on the mission assigned to Coast Guard, I approached the Chief of Navy Intelligence (a two star Admiral) with a plan that addressed a combination of requirements by both Navy and Coast Guard intelligence officers assigned to the battle group. The Chief of Navy Intelligence endorsed my requirements and approved my plan, but getting the funding required still required approval by a DoD intelligence (DODIIS) review board. I met with the Chairmen of the Board, a Navy SES, and formally presented my plan. After a grueling 1 hour question and answer session with the board, I was awarded the money and unexpectedly was also awarded follow on support money (outlined in my plan) for the next 3 years. I also was appointed to DODIIS Management Board, a first for the Coast Guard. Once funded, I stood up engineering and support staff, and implemented a management board, to ensure proper execution and oversight of the funding and mission alignment. The current intelligence workstations and servers at this time were UNIX based, as windows could not come close to the processing power needed for some of the applications. To maximize the funding, I collaborated with a counter drug effort that was under