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News
New Air Force intelligence ground station tracking well
Story by Maj. Brent Legreid,
DCGS-1 Co-Project Engineer
Construction photos by Patrick Bloodgood,
Norfolk District Public Affairs Office
LANGLEY AFB, Va. – The much-heralded Distributed Common Ground System or DCGS-1 is on track and well within budget for a March 2009 completion.
The $38.7 million military construction project is the largest of four similar systems under construction across the Air Force that will consolidate information from multiple intelligence-gathering platforms and distribute it to various Defense Department users, said Air Force officials.
Norfolk District, Army Corps of Engineers is managing the 120,000-square-foot, multi-building campus project. S.B. Ballard Construction of Virginia Beach, Va., is the project’s prime contractor with a fine record of building diverse facilities for the Army Corps of Engineers.
The evolutionary intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) system, known as DCGS-1, is a globally dispersed, wide area network of fixed and mobile ground processing systems that collect data from high-flying manned and unmanned aerial vehicles and satellites, of which the Predator, Global Hawk and U-2 are the most familiar. The main function of the system is to receive intelligence feeds from multiple sources at a common ground station. The data is then processed, stored, correlated, exploited and disseminated to Air Operations Centers to enable time-critical strikes.
The 480th Intelligence Wing of the Air Combat Command here will operate the new DCGS-1. The campus will feature 350-person intelligence and support element, permanent installation of multiple ISR ground sensor platforms, and all the associated command and control and redundant utility systems required for continuous operations under any contingency.
From the Notice to Proceed in June 2007, the project has remained on schedule despite a couple unique site preparation issues. Initially, the Langley Resident office of Norfolk District had to work through issues of displacing wetlands and dynamically compacting of the ground. However, a team of teams has surmounted these issues and other smaller problems. That team consists of the Corps, the project designer and contractor, key stakeholders and interested parties, and of course our customer, the U.S. Air Force.
Because the DCGS-1 is such a large project, many members of the Langley office have been involved to keep this project on track and within budget. At the team’s core are Patrick Devereux and Al Young. Add to that Erika Field, a summer intern, Oscar Aujero, Maj. Coby Short, who spent a year on the project, and additional Corps support as required. Virtually everyone in the Langley office has lent some of their expertise to the unique considerations of this project, including Christian Brumm, our resident engineer and administering contract officer for this and all Langley projects.
Co-Project Engineer Devereux said the project is on schedule because the entire team communicates well. "We have real-life, face-to-face discussions. This results in good relationships with everyone pulling in the same direction. And we have fun," said Devereux.