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Strategic War Planning System (SWPS-SIOP)

The Global Command and Control System Strategic War Planning System-Single Integrated OPLAN (SWPS-SIOP) supports the USSTRATCOM mission to deter major military attack, especially nuclear attack, on the United States and its allies, and employ forces if deterrence fails. It is the joint system required to develop, verify, and produce the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) -- the nation’s strategic warfighting plan -- and related products. While the current planning process and system is designed to support strategic nuclear forces, modernization will provide a system capable of both deliberate and adaptive strategic nuclear planning in fixed and mobile planning environments while accommodating non-strategic nuclear forces and new missions.

USSTRATCOM's role is to prepare various war plans. The change in the strategic environment has resulted in a reduction of the number of targets on the Eurasian landmass; however, the complexity of building an effective war plan has increased through an expanded worldwide database, which now includes potential problem areas outside the Eurasian landmass. These changes require a planning system that can plan more options to provide the NCA with greater flexibility in developing national strategies. Thus in addition to the core war plan, the Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP), USSTRATCOM must be prepared to provide a greater number of smaller, more flexible, adaptive options. This requires SIOP development and implementation time to be reduced from approximately 18 months to as little as six months, the development of small options in as little as 24 hours, and the need for platform compatible with common deliberate and crisis planning tools in both fixed and mobile planning environments. The benefits to STRATCOM and to military planning is in greater responsiveness to crisis action planning. STRATCOM planners are equipped with the ability to perform adaptive, scenario-dependent mission planning that can be integrated into and communicated to other unified commands which may be in a supported or supporting role.

The conceptual SWPS computing environment consists of graphics workstations as the predominant application-processing platform. A global server provides access to printers and global data (data used by more than one SWPS application). External links are controlled by the global server through guard processors. The communications backbone contains four rings supporting TOP SECRET SIOP/Extremely Sensitive, TOP SECRET, SECRET, and UNCLASSIFIED information processing.

The SWPS Modernization Program is a consolidation of several upgrade projects that respond to major program planning guidance objectives identified in the DoD Defense Guidance issued in May 1992, and listed as part of the USSTRATCOM SWPS Mission Need Statement (August 3, 1993). A February 1994 system decision memorandum established the acquisition program and initiated OSD oversight of the program. The test strategy has been structured to evaluate the system throughout the course of entire SIOP cycles, as major applications are ready for evaluation. A recent decision to accelerate the modernization effort has resulted in a test program that conducted its first operational test in 1997. A full system OA was conducted in FY98.

Since 1994, the 100-plus members from USSTRATCOM’s J5 and J6 directorates that comprise the Strategic War Planning System/Enterprise Database (SWPS/EDB) team have managed the modernization of the SWPS system that generates the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP). That modernization is expected to save the government between $7 and $15 million by moving SWPS from a mainframe system to a modern, client-server network environment. In addition, the modernization consolidated 24 databases into a single, more efficient EDB, with a ten-fold reduction in the different types of data or data elements within the database itself.

The SWPS Program office has been at the forefront of Acquisition reform embracing the Corporate Information Management (CIM) initiative and the concepts of Functional Process Improvements (FPI) and Activity Based Costing (ABC). From the development and approval of the Functional Economic Analysis (FEA) in January 1994 to the Major Automated Information Systems Review Council (MAISRC), the SWPS program office has restructured to streamline the acquisition and functional processes. Functional Integrated Product Teams (IPT) worked to accelerate modernization by 3 years reducing near-real maintenance and SIOP development time from 18 to 15 months with a further reduction objective to 6 months upon reaching a Full Operational Capability. Upon a completing modernization, personnel will have been cut by 26% at savings of more than $13 million a year. Acquisition streamlining has supported overall Program savings of approximately 65 million by simplifying contracting procedures and decreasing documentation requirements. Streamlining also allowed for quickly implementing community standard analysis models reducing duplication/costs and facilitating collaborative planning.

In accordance with the DOT&E-approved TEMP (January 1997), AFOTEC conducted an IOT&E on the SWPS Missile Application using the Single Integrated Operational Plan process in July 1997. The primary criteria for measuring missile application system performance consisted of time-to-plan requirements and field abort percentages. The IOT&E revealed no major problems; however, there were some shortcomings. The missile planning subsystem demonstrated the required performance throughout the test. The users thought the system was a significant improvement over the legacy system. Shortcomings fell in the area of suitability¾ primarily document production, error abatement and complexity. Software documentation also needed improvement.

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