(Note to editors: This is a sidebar to the story titled "Personal commitment drives NAVAIR’s focus on warfighter.")

By Eddie C. Riley
Focus Group Executive Secretariat

With a vow to improve interaction between the fleet and Naval Air Systems Command, the Warfighter Focus Group co-leaders used their personal desire to support Sailors on the waterfront as the standard.

RDMLs Wally Massenburg and Gib Godwin signed out a letter to potential focus group members that stated, “Membership on this team has to come from a desire inside of you. If you just want to be a part of this team because you think it’s the cool thing to do or a career opportunity, that’s the wrong reason.”

They selected about 70 people from across NAVAIR, with a few from the fleet, to join the focus group. The group rationalized their mission and subdivided into groups to work optimally toward three thrusts: modernization, sustainment and education.

Modernization

Godwin mentioned the transition from the F-14 to the F-18 aircraft to introduce the efforts taken on by the Modernization subgroup.

“As our aircraft get older, they get harder and more costly to maintain. The direction the fleet has decided on is to replace the aircraft at an optimal time considering the whole aircraft and what it takes to fly it,” Godwin said.

“ For example, the F-14 has been around since the 70s, since I first came in the Navy. So, now you’ll take the F-18E/F and replace the F-14s because the cost per flight hour by that airplane is about half what it costs to fly an F-14 and it has the same kind of capability. Now, in addition to saving money, we’re saving work hours,” he added.

Massenburg said the Warfighter Focus Group brings another dimension to the consideration process as in “What does it mean to the Sailor?” instead of solely focusing on the budget implications.

NAVAIR is able to facilitate answering these kinds of questions through its network of naval aviation experts from the lead type commander (the fleet customers), the Chief of Naval Operations staff (requirements) and the WFG (the acquisition professionals).

“We look at things from this perspective. OK, how is this change or this reduction in dollars for this program going to affect the Sailor?” Massenburg said.

“It’s not only cost savings we’re looking at, but we’re looking for changes in direct maintenance man hours per flight hour, we’re looking for changes in the meantime between failure and we’re planning for support equipment, which certainly cannot be ignored but they weren’t concentrated on in this budget-only focused environment,” he said.

Along these lines of contribution to the warfighter, the Modernization subgroup has surveyed each NAVAIR program to obtain data on future naval capabilities (FNC) they are working on, current new initiatives and where the program is heading. They were looking for “gaps” and opportunities to prevent duplication.

The subgroup has created a Web site with information on operational advisory groups (OAG), program offices roadmaps, and points of contact for the science advisors, FNC and OAGs.

Sustainment

The Sustainment subgroup’s main contribution to date has been the collection and prioritization of 34 naval aviation challenges as identified by the fleet, and dubbed the fleet “headhurters” list. The list includes areas concerning the flight hour program, technical publications, communicating engineering investigation data to the fleet, flight clearances and configuration control board process.

Recently, the independent actions of this the Sustainment subgroup have integrated into the Navy-level Naval Aviation Readiness Integrated Improvement Program (NAVRIIP), under the leadership of lead type commander Vice Adm. John Nathman, Naval Air Force, Pacific Fleet; Rear Adm. Ken Heimgartner, director of the Fleet Readiness Division (OPNAV, N43); and Massenburg as the chief operating officer.

The goal of this combined effort is to do a root-cause analysis of barriers to effective and efficient naval aviation and provide systemic fixes for them.

Education

The Warfighter Focus Group also recognized the need for members of NAVAIR to understand fleet needs and members of the fleet to understand NAVAIR capabilities. To facilitate a mutual familiarity between both, the WFG stood up the Education task team.

“Across the Navy, we need to educate ourselves inside of NAVAIR as to what the fleet is talking about. We need to understand their language. In addition to that, they need to understand us,” Massenburg said. “How do we make sure we get that universal translator ?” he asked.

Part of the answer to this question comes with two courses the team has created and coordinated with NAVAIR and naval aviation training communities. The first course is Fleet 101, which is intended to inform NAVAIR employees on the practical aspects the operational fleet.

NAVAIR 102 is the reciprocal course aimed at educating fleet aviation operators on the basics of the acquisition world and the function of NAVAIR.

Another product this team created to help tell the NAVAIR story during interaction with the fleet is the “grab-n-go” brief, a comprehensive package of information detailing the command’s operating concept, and products and services, that may be tailored as necessary.

For general background on the Navy, the Education task team has implemented a “Did You Know” column on wingspan at https://wingspan.navair.navy.mil/.

In pursuit of making things better for the warfighter, the admirals work 12 to 14 hours a day and have become road warriors in their interaction with the fleet. The combination of travel for their full-time jobs of leading the Logistics competency and the PEO (T), Massenburg spends about 200 days and Godwin around 100 days a year with fleet customers.

“One of the things that we talked about, that Admiral Dyer spoke of as well, is the Warfighter Focus Group being the external interface from NAVAIR to the fleet. The other focus groups give us the opportunity to see how we can improve our processes, our business strategy, our resources, our people to make sure we attend to the warfighter,” said Godwin.

“That’s not to say that others in NAVAIR don’t interface with the fleet daily, but we are the official liaison to bring that information back from the fleet and disseminate it to the other focus groups and functional areas to give us an opportunity to appropriately align how we prioritize things inside the Naval Air Systems Command with what is needed in the fleet,” he said.

For more information on this release, contact Eddie Riley at 301-757-5136 or [email protected].