CENTERFOLD

NAVAIR: Networking By Land, Sea Or Air

When NAVAIR began its business modernization and defense downsizing efforts in April 1991, the organization was the Navy's equivalent of a top 20 business organization--48,000 military and civilian personnel and an annual budget of $16.1 billion. At the time, NAVAIR's business infrastructure was based on mid-1970's proprietary computer technology. The NAVAIR Headquarters Network (NHN) program developed an enterprise information network, following Government Open Systems Interconnection Profile (GOSIP) standards. The new NHN configuration dropped GOSIP and is based on TCP/IP, including the latest Windows and Macintosh systems connected to six DEC VAXes (running OpenVMS and Pathworks) and 20 application servers (running Windows NTAS) across a dual-ring, fiber-optic backbone throughout six buildings. Videoconferencing facilities exist at 18 of NAVAIR's 22 sites, with global access to the Department of Defense (DoD) and commercial sites over the DoD telecommunications network.

The NHN team later developed an enterprisewide area network, known today as the Naval Aviation Wide Area Network (NAVWAN). "30, 000 users, 18 months, $750,000: Any questions?" is how NHN designers wryly describe the connections, amount of time since NAVWAN's origin and the project's total cost. NAVWAN was led by civil service and military personnel and assisted by contractor teams from throughout NAVAIR. NAVWAN is an enterprise-scale network, integrating NAVAIR's 15,000 Macintoshes and 25,000 PCs operating at 22 employee team sites. NAVWAN provides access to all of NAVAIR's industry partners' public information through the Internet.

NAVAIR provides airplanes, weapons and systems to the fleet, and must ensure quality with fewer people designing, testing and maintaining these services. NAVWAN has enabled NAVAIR to work at becoming an industry leader in Computer-aided Acquisition and Lifecycle Support (CALS). This system puts interactive electronic technical manuals in online training systems for sailors maintaining aircraft in carrier battle groups. Health of Naval Aviation (HONA) was created to analyze aircraft inventory cost, engineering and logistics support through the year 2015 and beyond. The HONA production system was developed using PowerBuilder GUI tools from Powersoft Corp. All users on the Naval Aviation Systems team can access HONA's client/server system, which operates on the Oracle database server. The Macintosh version of PowerBuilder is currently being tested.

NAVWAN unifies NAVAIR and strengthens relationships among sites, promoting sound decision-making and the delivery of quality products on time and for less money. 



December 15, 1995