THE BIG ASK
ground in Monterey. Tat’s the biggest Army acquisition foot- print ever seen at NPS.
BIGGER AND BETTER NPS leadership not only welcomed the changes Ostrowski requested, but also helped build a correlated distance learning program, called 722, awarding the same degree, for the Army’s multifunctional career field civilians in acquisition. As a part-time, 24-month degree program, it delivers DAWIA Level III certified training equivalencies in program management and systems engi- neering along with Level II in test and evaluation and contracting fundamentals. More than 40 acquisition civilians have already enrolled in that program, being centrally selected by the DACM Office within the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center.
One of the striking aspects of both the military resident 522 and civilian distance 722 programs is another technological upgrade— the Capstone Study Project—and how it differs from a traditional master’s thesis paper. Projects are selected by the Army and other services, which “sponsor” (as the client) five-person student teams as they solve real-world problems with a time-phased systems engineering approach. A pair of faculty project advisers is assigned to each team to coach them through the six-month process of architecting solutions. In the end, the clients, the Systems Engi- neering Department faculty and all of the other Army Acquisition Corps students are briefed by each team on their project results.
Another NPS graduate, Lt. Gen. L. Neil Turgood, director for hypersonics, directed energy, space and rapid acquisition and director of the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, visited NPS last June, and gave one of our six student teams its capstone thesis project: to find an affordable radar that can be mounted on a ground combat vehicle and track targets on the move. His message to our 62 assembled Army Acquisi- tion Corps officers was that the new 522 program was going to be extremely advantageous for them, because of their result- ing qualifications to serve in either 51A or 51C assignments. He advised them that diversity of knowledge is often more impor- tant in acquisition than depth in any single field.
Te other five teams conducted their capstone projects in such topics as: Multiple concepts of operations for swarms of unmanned aerial systems.
• An acquisition value model for Special Operations Forces materiel.
• An analysis of contracting transactions in deployed versus garri- son environments.
164 Army AL&T Magazine Winter 2020
• Prioritizing Army Community Services funds allocation. • Field experimentation of the Soldier-Borne Sensor for opti- mal display size.
Te last team just won the competition for Systems Engineering Management Outstanding Capstone Project.
CONCLUSION Te latest investment by the Army at NPS is the establishment of a new military position on the faculty, the Systems Engineer- ing and Army Acquisition Chair, to help administer the Army’s programs and oversee them for the military deputy and DACM. Col. Joyce B. Stewart will be the first in the position. Stewart, a seasoned program manager, arrives in April 2020 from the Army’s Office of the Chief Systems Engineer. She will bring Army rele- vance and current perspectives from her recent experience. She is welcomed by President Rondeau as an NPS asset and will help us move into the next decade, in support of all Army acquisition students at the school.
Overall, the new 522 and 722 degree programs deliver what Army leadership asked for: more technological relevance in an era of increasing threats, with students actually using the tools they’ve acquired before they leave for their follow-on acquisition assign- ments. Qualified to serve in a larger variety of assignments than ever before, our graduates are going to be able to contribute to warfighting readiness in the newest technological fields. Tey’ll be well-equipped to equip the warfighters.
For more information on either the military or civilian program, go to
https://asc.army.mil/web/career-development/programs/ and
https://asc.army.mil/web/news-alt-jas18-mastering- acquisition/.
JOHN T. DILLARD, COL., USA (RET.), managed major weapons development efforts for most of his 26-year career in the U.S. Army. He is now a senior lecturer in the Systems Engineering Department of the Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at NPS, where he also serves as the technical representative for the Army’s new Master of Science programs in Systems Engineering Management. He holds an M.S. in systems management from the University of Southern California and is a distinguished military graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a B.A. in biological sciences. Dillard is a frequent contributor to Army AL&T and his most recent, previous article appeared in the Fall 2018 issue.
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