By Geoff Fein
The Coast Guard is looking to leverage off of the Navy’s open architecture efforts, not only to improve commonality between the two sea services, but to push affordability and enhance mission capability, a Coast Guard official said.
Conceptually it makes a great deal of sense, Capt. Joe Vojvodich, Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) acquisition program manager, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“The things that we want to leverage, and the things we are doing, appear to be very similar to what the Navy is already doing,” he said.
For example, last month, Rear Adm. Terry Benedict, Program Executive Officer Integrated Warfare Systems (PEO IWS) met with Coast Guard officials to discuss the Common Asset Library (CAL).
Currently the Navy maintains the Software Hardware Asset Reuse Enterprise (SHARE) repository where companies can submit software code in an effort to enable development of or suggest improvements to Navy surface warfare systems. Components selected and approved for reuse will be placed under configuration management control in CAL, which will be maintained in the SHARE, or a successor, repository, according to the Navy.
The greater understanding the Coast Guard has of the CAL, the greater understanding it will have of the interfaces, Vojvodich said.
“We can make sure our architecture matches it accordingly, and/or we could reuse stuff in that library,” he said.
Vojvodich pointed out that because the Coast Guard and Navy are closely aligned, there are going to be capability and mission sets that are clearly going to overlap. And there are going to be other areas where it doesn’t make sense for the Navy to accommodate the Coast Guard, he added.
“There might be some mission sets that will allow COTS (common-off-the-shelf) hardware and software to be able to solve our solutions. It doesn’t need to be as robust as the Navy,” Vojvodich said. “There are going to be some areas that don’t bleed over into the Navy, but there is going to be something in the middle. And the middle could be things that we can leverage, not only the interfaces and software itself, but we could leverage the processes as well.”
The Coast Guard has a history with the Navy in terms of leveraging the Navy’s programs of record that translate into existing Coast Guard missions, Vojvodich said.
For example Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) systems or Navy gun platforms, he added.
“So when we look at their model to decouple software from hardware, it makes sense for us to pursue, to leverage, to monitor, and to piggy-back wherever we can with the Navy’s approach,” Vojvodich noted. It fits in our approach as well. We are trying to do the same kind of things.”
In the Coast Guard’s old acquisition world, the service bought a ship and the C4I systems that came with it, all at the same time, Vojvodich said. “The ship’s program manager decided what radar and what kind of radios.”
When the Coast Guard would buy a ship with high-level performance specifications, such as the need to interoperate, the contractor sometimes was able to bring in systems they wanted to use, Vojvodich said. “If we want to crack open the box and make adjustments, sometimes it’s very costly. Sometimes we didn’t have the right fit…all those kinds of issues.”
“How can we leverage and translate that to other platforms and maintain the whole enterprise perspective? The Navy approach is right on the money,” he added.
Currently the Coast Guard is looking at a Navy effort on a global positioning navigation tracking and timing system, Vojvodich noted. “They have a perspective on what that needs to do. That’s going to eventually replace their enterprise-wide global positioning enterprise tracking system.”
“There is going to be a high percentage of requirements that match up to what we need and we can potentially leverage [off of it], but there are some nuances,” he added. “So we are having the opportunity to engage them and be able to interject Coast Guard requirements. Those are near-time engagements that are going on right now that the Navy is very open and receptive [too].
“When I see the things the Navy is doing, we see there are things we can leverage from the Navy…sometimes it is very obvious, some times it is not,” Vojvodich said.