HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. – Hanscom Air Force Base Program Executive Officers discussed upcoming business opportunities with industry representatives during the Hanscom PEO Fall Update Oct. 26.
Hosted by the Hanscom Representatives Association, the event was held at the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel in Burlington, Massachusetts.
Jeremy Thiele, deputy director, Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence and Networks, gave a background on the organization’s structure, the elements of the portfolio and discussed future contract offerings.
“We are here to enable and make C3BM (PEO for Command, Control, Communications and Battle Management) successful,” he said. “As C3BM defines their architecture, we are the ones that are providing and supporting the environment.”
He also spoke about upcoming requests for proposals and the contracting process.
Thiele said, “We have ongoing conversations about how we lower costs of multifunctional arrays, multifunctional processors and how we build those that are affordable so we can get on more platforms.”
Steven Wert, program executive officer for Digital, gave an overview of his directorate and discussed the current challenges of hiring and the rate of attrition.
Wert spoke about their 23% annual attrition rate and their “extreme focus” on hiring from both the public and private sectors.
“The goal for FY23 was to hire 338 people,” he said. “We hired 319 people, and what’s even more interesting is 202 of them are new to government.”
As a result, the supervisors within his directorate are developing these new hires.
Wert also noted that the Digital Directorate recently updated their mission statement to: “Integrate, automate, and accelerate C2 (command and control) operations to make the world safer for the Joint Force, our allies, and the nation.”
“I like our mission statement because it doesn't just describe what we do, it explains why our mission couldn't be more important,” he said.
Scott Hardiman, director of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center’s Nuclear Command, Control and Communications (NC3) Integration Directorate and Air Force program executive officer for NC3, gave an overview of the structure and function of NC3.
“Nuclear deterrence operations underpins just about everything we do from a national security standpoint,” he said. “Our adversaries need to know that our nuclear forces are credible and that those systems are going to operate when they need to operate and are going to be effective.”
Hardiman also noted his organization is celebrating its eighth anniversary as a directorate and discussed the journey they have been on.
“In 2015 we started with one person assigned to the directorate, and since then we have become an organization of almost 500 people,” he said. “We have inherited a portfolio of about 26 different programs and funding lines that we are directly responsible for.”
The Hanscom Representatives Association brings representatives from small, large, and start-up Hanscom area businesses together to encourage collaboration in the acquisition process.