AIRWorks Streamlining Mission Support
Posted for The Patuxent Partnership
The tension between process and speed of response can confound even the sharpest of managers. On Feb. 19, leaders of AIRWorks explained how they’re retooling cooperative work relationships to foster innovation, respond to urgent needs and accelerate response and outcomes across NAVAIR.
AIRWorks is the “branding” of the Warfare Center and Fleet Readiness Center’s current capabilities. The AIRWorks concept centralizes management of tasks that draw on the talent of the entire organization to provide product to the fleet as swiftly as possible. The team can take things that already exist and put them together in new ways to get capabilities to war fighters in the shortest time possible.
RDML Dean Peters, Commander, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Assistant Commander for Research and Engineering, Naval Air Systems Command, and Robert B. Smith, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Deputy, Director AIRWorks, briefed Patuxent Partnership members on the AIRWorks program.
Michael Schroeder of the NAWCAD Tech Transfer Office walked listeners through the collaborative structure that is bringing government and private sector entities together in an effort to be more nimble and cost-effective in sharing and applying technology breakthroughs.
The impetus to assemble the best team of experts is expected to create opportunities for defense contractors to participate in the creative problem-solving AIRWorks is fostering, especially integrating emerging technologies into weapons systems.
An example of an AIRWorks intervention was crafting ballistic protection for CV-22s damaged en route to Sudan by small arms fire. Some of AIRWorks’ clients who send an SOS are special ops customers who are often in a tight spot and can’t wait long for a solution. You can see the video of that project here.
Tight budgets are driving initiatives such as AIRWorks and technology transfer efforts. The NAWCAD Tech Transfer office brokers “inside the lab” and “outside the lab” relationships, joining military R&D and procurement on the inside with academia, trade organizations, industry and state and local networks on the outside to develop partnerships. These can lead to commercial service agreements that permit close cooperation between the federal government and the private sector in the development and ownership of intellectual property.
