18 septembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

Air Force transforms existing program office into its new software development hub

By:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force's program executive office for battle management has been redesignated PEO Digital, but it's more than a name change, the service's top acquisition executive told Defense News.

Instead, it's about taking one of the Air Force's most diverse acquisition portfolios — covering everything from JSTARS ground-surveillance planes to certain communications gear — and transforming it into the headquarters of agile software development as the service moves forward with evermore sophisticated information technology programs, said Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics.

In at least the beginning, it will look much like the service's program office for buying services.

“It won't do all of the software development for the Air Force. There's no way it could,” Roper said in a Sept. 7 interview. But the hope is that it will be able to manage agile software development for some of the Air Force's most tricky programs, while at the same time providing expertise and software development tools to the rest of the program offices.

“As programs shift to agile development, where they're pushing code out every month, where they are working directly with the user, where they are measuring their output using metrics that tell them whether it's good code or bad code, PEO Digital will provide Air Force standards for doing it and a playbook for making it work,” Roper said.

FUll article: https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/air-force-association/2018/09/17/air-force-transforms-existing-program-office-into-its-new-software-development-hub

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    By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department on Tuesday cleared six Foreign Military Sales cases, potentially worth a combined total of $1.55 billion. The six cases, spread across South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Croatia, Lebanon and Canada, were announced on the website of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. DSCA announcements mean that the State Department has decided the potential FMS cases meet its standards, but this does not guarantee the sales will happen in their announced forms. Once approved by Congress, the foreign customer begins to negotiate on price and quantity, both of which can change during the final negotiations. Here are the details on each case: Croatia: The largest dollar value of the announced FMS cases comes from Croatia, which seeks to spend $757 million on refurbishing its 76 M2A2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles. The NATO ally operates older models dating to Operation Desert Storm, and is looking to upgrade capabilities. 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