John is currently the Chief Engineer on Battle Command Mission Execution (BCME) of the Brigade Combat Team – Modernization (BCTM), formerly Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, the cornerstone of Army modernization. He is responsible for the technical direction of the program and develops all technical program positions. As the Chief Engineer he is responsible for mitigating the most significant program technical risks and works with the customer to resolve these risks. His work includes developing program direction on meeting performance requirements, security solution approach, and Safety Critical requirements as well as over arching architectural decisions. John’s position requires him to work closely with Contracts in providing technical direction and specifying requirements to suppliers. John is also responsible for evaluating the suppliers’ architecture and implementation approach. The program extension proposals have required him to negotiate with the customer for significant booking in over $160 million of new business.
John has successfully worked with the customer in shaping the direction of the BCME program to allow it to be recognized as one of the strongest partners, achieving a 96% award fee. During the original BCME proposal John was part of the team to develop the Component Service Framework (CSF), a pattern-based approach to interfacing services with FCS infrastructure, which earned an NCS Excellence in Technology Award in 2003. The CSF approach has been used as a key enabler on several programs, including Joint Effects Tactical Targeting System (JETTS), DDG-1000, and the Fires Engine Product Line efforts.
On the Joint Effects Tactical Targeting System (JETTS), John served as the Chief Architect. JETTS is a Command and Control system for the United Kingdom’s (UK) Ministry of Defense (MoD). He provided overall technical direction and Systems Engineering for the international multi-teamed program. On the JETTS program, he led the team in a demonstration of the program’s technical readiness in the Coalition Warfighter Interoperability Demo (CWID). He provided in the field support working directly with the customer. This led to a successful Critical Design Review (CDR) for the program and put the program on track for full funding at the MoD Main Gate.
As IPT Lead of the C2PC Client Team, he was a leader of the software design and architecture of the Effect Management Tools (EMT) and early Fire Support Client work for the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) program. This effort resulted in a flexible and robust software architecture that seamlessly integrates a variety of mapping products, is tailorable to the customer and role of the user, and is extensible to many new applications. EMT merged the requirements of four efforts - Air Support Client, C2PC, Fire Support Client, and JWID Client- delivering more than the required capability at a substantial cost savings. EMT is an early example of successful reuse through code-sharing, resulting in initial cost savings for the Air Support Client 700+ manhours and reducing the FSCOORD Synch Tool bid by over 2000 hours. EMT has transitioned into production as part of the AFATDS product family, generating $3-5M of yearly follow-on business and was recently awarded a 2008 DoD Top 5 Award.
John’s unique view and insight into NCS came from his position as the Regional Technical Lead and Integration Framework (IF) IPT lead on Enterprise Net-Centric Integration Capability (ENIC). ENIC’s goal was to showcase pursuits capabilities with "Speed to Market, Speed to Demo, Lowest Cost." To improve NCS integration capabilities, he worked with pursuits across NCS to improve customer demonstrations of their solutions by remotely utilizing hardware and software assets throughout Raytheon. This included working with the programs to rapidly create an architecture to allow a demonstration to take place with limited resources. As the IF IPT lead he lead the creation of a toolkit of integration enablers by constructing infrastructure, reusable software components, standards, and best practices. This allowed the demonstration team to quickly integrate mission capabilities as part of a solution, resulting in end-to-end demonstration or customer experimentation.
John's involvement in IRAD and prototype efforts is benefited from his prior military experience. He is able to quickly capture customer needs and formulate solutions that demonstrate Raytheon's variety of capabilities. When working on IRAD, such as RMS's Non-Line of Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS), John provided expert knowledge of architecture and developed a design to take advantage of RMS's specific capabilities. His collaboration with RMS created an architectural solution that is being fielded.
John understands that growth is important for Raytheon’s future. This is evident through his work in development of a strategic vision for Effects Battle Management System (EBMS) product line for Thomas
Shaurette. John works on developing a technical road map that aligns with the EBMS business objectives.
John’s growth extends to working with engineers, as he is a formal and informal mentor to junior engineers, interns, and college and high school students. As an approachable person, John seeks out the opportunity to have interns work on programs he is engaged in and enthusiastically works to give these students the best possible experience in the field of engineering. John is also part of a committee that works with Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) to foster growth in technology. Raytheon sponsors the efforts of IPFW to create a robotic team to compete in RoboCup. When working with high school students, John has worked with Junior Achievement by visiting classrooms to teach basic business principles. John created a Software Engineering program that gives High School students interested in engineering, an in depth understanding of software development by giving them real programming experience in an entertaining interactive way.
John is a recent graduate of the Systems Engineering Technical Development Program (SETDP), and has returned to the SETDP classroom as an instructor and module owner for the Network Centric Systems (NCS) business overview portion of the program. He completed his Masters degree in Computer Science at IPFW. His thesis was to define the architecture for IPFW’s RoboCup team. The goal of the architecture is to address the significant turnover that will happen due to the wide variety of students, faculty, and professional engineers. This is accomplished by effectively identifying and organizing the technical tasks in a well-defined architecture that is being modeled using the Department of Defense Architectural Framework (DoDAF).