The name counts

Global Strike Solutions' aim: integrate platforms, satisfy customer needs

BY CHRIS HADDOX

What's in a name? When it comes to Global Strike Solutions, it's everything, according to George Muellner.

Muellner, vice president and general manager of the Air Force Systems unit of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, came up with the name Global Strike Solutions. It's the name of a new organization in Air Force Systems. The organization's mission: address the growing need to integrate platforms to give the customer what they want.

"Our government customer is thinking more and more about integrated solutions as opposed to just platforms. Just offering them weapons, an unmanned vehicle or other platforms without understanding what the integrated solution is just didn't make sense any more," Muellner said.

"We need to be able to strike anywhere on the globe around the clock," said Darryl Davis, who in late March was named vice president of Global Strike Solutions. "That's the mission the customer is focused on, and that's the evolution of the name Global Strike Solutions."

Before taking this role, Davis was Boeing's Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems program manager. The unmanned aircraft program will play a key role in offering global strike solutions to the customer, as will all manned programs and weapons programs, because with Global Strike each program can be offered as part of a solution to the customer.

"Fundamentally it gives us an opportunity to leverage all the things we're doing with our platforms and weapons systems and allows us to look at ways to deliver them in a rapid manner ... to strike anywhere on the globe," Davis said.

The one-stop shopping for global strike solutions is not just a new way to interface with customers. It's also a new way for Boeing programs to communicate with each other and come up with the best integrated solutions.

"One of my key objectives is to get everyone talking to one another," Davis said. "We all face similar hurdles. Since we started, I have already seen the programs communicate much more than they did before Global Strike Solutions came along."

Muellner knows the new way of doing business won't happen overnight.

"For years we have operated by talking about individual platforms. But the move to network-centric operations (NCO) by the military has transformed the way wars are fought and how they think about fighting wars. This is another step along our way to do the same thing," he said.

The NCO mindset falls right in line with the U.S. Air Force's way of thinking when it comes to being able to strike quickly, anywhere, anytime.

"The Air Force's continuing transition to network-centric operations is a revolutionary development in our global strike capabilities," said U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Bill Looney, commander of Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. "Through advanced sensors and data links, we can share critical information quickly across platforms to more effectively identify and strike targets as they emerge."

For Boeing, a major step in addressing that need started three years ago with the formation of Integrated Defense Systems, providing a "single face" to the military customer. Global Strike Solutions allows IDS to continue down that path with a single face that reflects all global strike activities.

That's no small task, but Davis, when asked to describe his complex job of blending multiple programs and close to 4,000 employees into basically one unit, said it's all about customer service.

"We need to understand what the customer wants and then be able to deliver what they are asking for," he said. "Basically, sell them what they want to buy, not what we want to sell them. I want to be able to provide them with solutions."

chris.d.haddox@boeing.com