ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, MD – The term “the more things change the more they stay the same” could be applied to the Relinquishment and Assumption of Charter ceremonies the Program Executive Office for Intelligence Electronic Warfare and Sensors (PEO IEW&S) hosted on Oct 1, in the Myer Auditorium.
In a unique ceremony, Christian Keller the (Acting) Project Manager for Airborne Reconnaissance & Exploitation Systems; Col. Christopher Davis, Project Manager Navigation Capabilities/Special Programs and Col. Edward Stawowczyk, Project Manager Night Vision/ Reconnaissance Surveillance & Target Acquisition relinquished the charters of their respective organizations as part of an overall PEO IEW&S realignment.
Immediately after relinquishing their charters Davis and Stawowczyk were presented charters to PEO IEW&S’ newly formed Project Manager Offices by Stephen Kreider, Program Executive Officer for PEO IEW&S. Davis will serve as PM for Sensors -Aerial Intelligence (PM SAI) headquartered at APG and Stawowczyk will lead Project Manager Terrestrial Sensors (PM TS), headquartered at Ft Belvoir, VA.
Following the moves PEO IEW&S will be left with five project manager offices (along with PM Electronic Warfare, PM Aircraft Survivability Equipment and PM Distributed Common Ground System-Army) to fall in line with an efficiency plan set forth two years ago that reduced the organization from seven PMs to five in order to best align with the PEO’s Core Competencies, promote System-of-System Integration, maintain customer focus on platform & Computing Operating Environment (COE) needs as well as capture organizational and funding efficiencies.
PM SAI is made up of Product Managers for Manned Aerial Reconnaissance and Surveillance Systems, Sensors-Airborne SIGINT (Signals Intelligence), Tactical Exploitation National Capabilities, Sensors for Unmanned Rotary Wing Systems as well as Sensors-Airborne MASINT (Measurement and Signature Intelligence) and Radars. The organization will work closely with counterpart PMs from PEO Aviation by focusing on the sensors that reside on board Army Aerial ISR platforms and their compliment of ground processing platforms.
PM TS is chartered to oversee seven Product Managers to include: Ground Sensors, Integrated Tactical Systems, Meteorological and Target Identification Systems, Position Navigation Timing, Airborne Systems, Global Positioning-Army and Combat Terrain Information Systems.
Kreider explained the purpose behind the realignment by stating, “PEO IEW&S is looking to achieve a closer linkage with the science and technology (S&T) community. We were in, and rightly so, a reactive responsibility process in getting capabilities to Soldiers as fast as we possibly could during the last 12 years. As a result of that necessity we became a little out of line with the science and technology community. In response we looked at what was the most efficient and effective alignment of PMs with the S&T community and that is how the current organization structure was developed.”
Under the PEOs new organizational parameters PMs are aligned to optimize sensor mission equipment packages (MEP) and the processing, exploitation, and dissemination (PED) architecture. “This realignment will best leverage our workforce’s expertise which allows us to focus on our mission,” said Kreider.
Another expected advantage of the realignment is that it affords PEO IEW&S the ability to dedicate efforts toward a system of systems perspective, so that sensor capabilities can be taken from other systems allowing them to be easily leveraged by other platforms. Ultimately this alignment will more tightly tie the requirements from Training and Doctrine Command and the PMs.
Although the PEO’s organizational structure has changed it continues to meet the mission of providing affordable, world class Sensor & Electronic Warfare capabilities that enable rapid situational understanding and decisive action.