Finding the RITE Acquisition Environment for Navy C2 Software

Abstract

The U.S. Navy has increasingly emphasized dominating the information battlespace as a key aspect of its warfighting strategy. As the Navy Strategy for Achieving Information Dominance states, whether characterized as intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, networks, communications, space, cyber, meteorology, oceanography, or electronic warfare, the Navy is inextricably and irreversibly dependent on information. Information provides a source of power but can also be an incapacitating weakness if not protected. Mastering the information domain is critical to the Navy's future success. (U.S. Navy, 2012, p. 3) A key aspect of mastering the information domain is mastering the Navy command and control (C2) systems that Navy operators rely on to assemble, organize, interpret, and analyze information. In order to agilely respond to a variety of different situations, Navy C2 systems must be agile themselves. The acquisition of Navy C2 systems has historically promoted stove-piped, single-mission systems that cannot react to the needs of today's warfighters. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) has collaborated with PEO C4I to devise and test an alternate acquisition process to address the challenges inherent in Navy C2 software acquisition. The new Rapid Integration and Test Environment (RITE) is a new lifecycle model of Navy C2 software that places increased emphasis on early and frequent software testing, as well as necessary software engineering practices at the source code level. RITE is a combination of commercial best-practice software engineering standards and processes; community process governance; contractual guidance; automated testing and report generation tools; and hosted development, test, and automated distribution facilities using a government and industry team agile acquisition model. Through the use of RITE, SSC Pacific and PEO C4I have beta-tested a process that can enable streamlined acquisition of Navy C2 software.