Military technology center renews priority on Navy

Much of what SPAWAR does behind its fences and walls on the Charleston Naval Weapons Station is secret. That's to be expected of a military information technology nerve center.

But one aspect of Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic that shouldn't be a mystery is which branch it serves, SPAWAR's military and civilian leaders have emphasized recently.

A SPAWAR worker installs electronic equipment on a mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle on the former Navy base in North Charleston.

Though known primarily by its catchy acronym, SPAWAR is part of the Navy, and above all its other work, it's responsible for building or buying, then installing, delivering and maintaining the information technology that allows U.S. sailors to achieve "information dominance" over the enemy.

SPAWAR's commanding officer addressed concerns about that very point at the Charleston Defense Contractors Association's annual conference earlier this month.

"Quite candidly, there had been a perception among Navy leadership that over the years, SPAWAR had broadened its support so widely that support to the Navy requirements had become diluted," said Rear Admiral Patrick H. Brady.

"I want to be very clear: I recognize we have important joint customers and interagency partners," Brady continued. "But we need to meet U.S. Navy requirements first."

The next morning at the conference, Christopher A. Miller, the top civilian at SPAWAR's local campus, echoed the admiral's sentiment.

"I'll be the first to tell you we're going to do some joint work because it's core to building our naval capabilities," said Miller, whose title is technical director. "What we're going to avoid, though, is this mentality that we'll do any work for anybody."

Renewing focus on "the fleet" is among the major changes in progress at SPAWAR.

Brady and Miller took the helm last year, Brady in August and Miller in January, and have not been shy about setting out priorities. Others are streamlining the acquisition process and elevating cyber and networks to the same status as "kinetic" aspects of warfare.

Beyond SPAWAR's internal plans, the looming military spending cuts, expected to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, are driving new thinking.

Congress' so-called debt supercommittee charged with developing a $1.5 trillion deficit reduction plan concluded its negotiations last week without agreeing on any recommendations.

"Obviously, the budget's a big deal," Miller said. "Whether we like it or not, we're going to have to figure out how to do our part."

But amid the uncertainty, Miller and Brady remained upbeat.

"The demand for what we do is obviously still very high," Miller said in an interview last month. He reiterated that hope in his speech to the CDCA. "I like to be where I'm at."

Others at SPAWAR or in the area's large defense contracting community that has grown up around it are less excited about the prospects of this new period in the command's local history. Questions asked of Miller and Brady at the conference two weeks ago indicated lingering uncertainty about what the SPAWAR of the future might look like.

Christopher A. Miller, SPAWAR technical director.

According to a July 2010 presentation, SPAWAR was at that time the single largest employer in the Charleston area, though Boeing may challenge that status now.

Also, it's more than tripled in size over the past decade, and its growth has averaged more than 35 percent each year from 2000 to 2009.

The command, which directly employs about 2,300 people in the Charleston area and indirectly supports two or three times as many jobs at private defense firms, means billions of dollars for the local economy.

There is concern about what will become of SPAWAR's growing body of work, which ranges from outfitting mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, made locally by Force Protection, to handling the Veterans Administrations benefits program.

Amid the budget uncertainty and the renewed focus on the Navy, perhaps SPAWAR's main challenge going forward, and what will keep its engineers and contractors busy working, is the enemy infiltration of high-tech information systems, what officials refer to as "cyber threats."

Brady, the SPAWAR commanding officer, expressed concern that the Department of Defense acquisition process is "very thorough, but at times ... also very cumbersome" and not well-suited to the speed of new dangers facing American security.

"It is not an ideal business model to respond to quickly developing cyber threats," Brady said. "Unfortunately, I see high-priority cyber threats as a reoccurring problem that we'll have to deal with going forward."

Miller said the virus that recently crippled an Iran nuclear facility and others like it "are having an impact."

"Obviously, there's more to come," he said.

But he agreed with Brady that the DOD acquisition process puts up too many "barriers."

"We've got a lot to learn in the Department of Defense if we really want to be agile and responsive, especially in the I.T. world," he said.

The local operation has undergone change before. It started as Navalex before evolving into an outfit called NISE East. Then, as part of the Navy base closure in the mid-1990s, the operation began its iterations of SPAWAR.

And it has more than survived those changes, acquiring an expansive portfolio that appears poised for paring if defense spending gets cut.

While even Miller admits it's "not exactly easy to understand what we do," the current operation off Remount Road along the Cooper River either engineers or procures contracts for information technology services for various federal agencies, ranging from the Army to the VA.

Whereas SPAWAR's main San Diego headquarters does more research and development work, SSC Atlantic specializes in delivering quick solutions.

SPAWAR recently completed a $9.5 million data center on the Charleston Naval Weapons Station. Pictured is Lt. Commander John Lukacs.

In various buildings on the campus, SPAWAR engineers provide meteorological and air traffic control services for a National Science Foundation research outpost in Antarctica and outfit armored military vehicles with radios, satellite terminals and infrared sensors that can cost as much as the trucks themselves. They also now operate a data center that still smelled new a couple of weeks after its official opening last month.

While the 20,000-square-foot data center is part of a Navy consolidation plan, the command's work on air traffic control has applications in the Air Force and Army, and the armed vehicle work is done for both the Army and Marine Corps.

Projects with only tenuous connections to the Navy could be at risk in the future.

"We must part with programs, roles and processes that are not integral to the Department of the Navy's future or vision or core to SPAWAR's mission," Brady said.

SPAWAR must use contractors to fulfill that mission, "not to satisfy every customer's need."

"Just because we can contract doesn't mean we should contract," Brady said, referring to work on medical or furniture contracts.

Miller, a Nashville native who served in the Marines and as a private consultant before rising through the ranks at SPAWAR, has attracted attention from the Pentagon.

The 39-year-old, who acknowledges his relative youth and has been in his current job for almost two years, has been picked for plum interim posts in Washington, D.C., and has been recognized with awards for his work.

But the plainspoken, self-described perfectionist says he plans to remain in the Charleston area to see SPAWAR through its next crucial transition period.

"Those rumors that I'm leaving, they're all a myth," he said. "And don't believe it because I'm here, my family loves it and we're glad to be here."

Reach Brendan Kearney at 937-5906 and follow him at twitter.com/kearney_brendan.

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