PEO Submarines Architecture Award

Program Executive Office (PEO) Submarines received the 2009 Defense Enterprise Architecture Achievement Award(DEAA) June 4 during the Department of Defense's (DoD) Enterprise Architecture Conference in St. Louis, Mo.

PEO Submarines was recognized for its submarine warfare federated tactical systems (SWFTS) efforts.

First awarded in 2008, the DEAA is given annually by the DoD in conjunction with the Association for Enterprise Information (AFEI) to one government and one industry individual and organization for excellence and innovation in developing and deploying enterprise architecture. The award also recognizes achievements which have profound effects on the improvement of operational performance and advancing information sharing capabilities in significant ways.

SWFTS is comprised of a number of submarine systems. Sonar, tactical control, weapons control, imaging, electronic warfare, radio room and torpedoes fall within the SWFTS construct. These systems utilize commercial off-the-shelf components and are on a regular technology insertion (TI) and advanced processor build (APB) cycle that ensures that they remain a state-of-the-art practice.

"We refresh the hardware and upgrade their software to continually improve their capability and greatly reduce the amount of maintenance required by our Sailors," said Dave Miskimens, PEO Team Submarine's technical director. "This business model, because of the regular TIs and APBs, allows us to rapidly introduce new capabilities into the fleet through an open architecture on a system of systems. This keeps our costs under control and allows us to provide SWFTS systems with the same look and feel aboard across submarine classes, something that had never been feasible before."

SWFTS was recognized for excelling in five specific award criteria, to include alignment with the DoD Information Management & Information Technology (IM/IT) Strategic Plan, innovation in the use of DoD architectural products, financial impact, operational impact and cultural change.

SWFTS aligned with the goals of the DoD IM/IT Strategic Plan by working to implement Internet protocol-based satellite communications and communications at speed and depth. In addition, SWFTS utilizes the common submarine radio room to provide seamless, transparent and secure connectivity for information exchange.

Innovation in the use of DoD architectural products was demonstrated by way of the Virginia Class Information Support Plan, which contains the description of SWFTS in terms of the Department of Defense Architectural Framework (DoDAF) artifacts. PEO Submarines continues to identify ways of incorporating the DoDAF artifacts in an architectural model to support future SWFTS resourcing and governance decisions. These endeavors have yielded positive financial and operational impact, saving millions of dollars per boat per year and providing improved resources to the fleet at an accelerated rate.