watervliet arsenal newsletter : salvo 30 april 2013

SALVO

Story begins on page 3 Photo by John B. Snyder

Do you feel safer?You Should!

Vol. 13, No. 4 U.S. Army Watervliet Arsenal, New York April 30, 2013

Also inside:Commander’s Column4-County ExerciseBox Shop goes LeanBenét Labs Leads DOD Challenge

Salvo April 30, 2013

The Arsenal Salvo is an authorized monthly publication for members of the Department of Defense. Contents of the Salvo are not necessarily the official views of, or an endorse-ment by the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, or the Watervliet Arsenal. News may be submitted for publication by sending articles to Public Affairs Officer, 1 Buffington Street, Bldg. 10, Watervliet, NY 12189, or stop by office #102, Bldg. 10, Watervliet Arsenal. The editor may also be reached at (518) 266-5055 or by e-mail: [email protected]. The editor reserves the right to edit all information submitted for publication.

Commander, Col. Mark F. MigaleddiPublic Affairs Officer, John B. SnyderEditor, John B. SnyderPhotographer: John B. Snyder Arsenal Facebook Page @http://on.fb.me/sq3LEm

Commander’sCorner

Mark F. MigaleddiCommanding

Manufacturer 6

For many of us, the arrival of spring means that after months of a long cold winter we can begin to expand our activities at home and at work. Given this year’s fiscal uncertainty, I understand that for some of you your personal activities are on a holding pattern. In some regards that remains true with respect to our fu-ture workload.

For one week this month, I was on daily teleconfer-ences with higher headquarters regarding how to maintain our critical manufacturing capabilities dur-ing the current and future austere environment. It was an honor briefing our senior Civilian leadership at the highest levels of both the Army Staff and Office of the Secretary of Defense.

To be honest, it was difficult to remove emotion from my voice as I explained why the Watervliet Arsenal was important to the Department of Defense and why DOD should fund the arsenal annually to maintain our critical capabilities. I will tell you that every arsenal commander believes they have skin in this game and each one is going “all in” trying to create awareness in senior levels of government for their mission and for their employees.

The bottom line is that there is no news in regards to furloughs. We have seen Congress step in and put forth legislation that will end the furloughs for other federal agencies, such as the Department of Transpor-

tation. I can tell you the Army’s senior leadership is doing everything possible to buy back as many days as they can to minimize or eliminate administrative furloughs.

But as dire as the current situation may seem, I am pleasantly amazed at the professionalism, dedication, and the sense of urgency our workforce has for ac-complishing the mission at hand. Maybe “amazed” isn’t the right word to use because our workforce has consistently shown such effort for nearly 200 years, despite the ebbs and flows of workload. Nevertheless, you are truly the shining light through this period of uncertainty.

No matter what falls out in regards to furloughs, I need you to continue to give 100 percent to getting the right product to our servicemen and women when they need it. If there was ever a time in our history that we needed to make our operations more efficient and quality unsurpassed by any other defense manufac-turer, now is that time.

The Watervliet Arsenal conducted a two-hour antiter-rorism exercise earlier this month that brought together more than 75 first responders from Albany, Schenectady, Rensselaer, and Saratoga Counties. This exercise tested arsenal and community first responders’ ability to react to a simulated terrorist threat involving chemical, bio-logical, and radiological agents.

The exercise coordinator, Arsenal Fire Chief John Whip-ple, said the arsenal began integrating community first responders, such hazardous material and EMS teams, about three years ago into the arsenal’s training plan for antiterrorism exercises.

“We knew that if there was ever a crisis on the arsenal that we would immediately make a call out to fellow first responders at local and state levels for support,” Whipple said. “These types of multi-echelon exercises allow us to better understand the unique capabilities that each response team may bring to a real-world incident.”


Story continues on page 4, See Training

Better trained, community better protected By John B. Snyder

A four-county antiterrorism exercise conducted on the arsenal this month brought together more than 75 first responders who worked with each other to attack three scenarios that required some degree of decontamination.

The goal of the exercise was to coordinate a quick response to a simulated terrorist attack that required decontamination of radiation, an unknown powder sub-stance, and a sulfur dioxide leak.

Schenectady County Fire Coordinator John Nuzback said the exercise was planned well before this month’s bombing in Boston, but that the events from Boston only solidify just how important it is for community first responders to train as a team.

“Equipment and well-trained personnel are important to providing a quick and complete response to a crisis situ-ation,” Nuzback said. “But it is the teamwork and the relationships that we build through these exercises that are most important.”

Prior to the first vehicle arriving, the arsenal had to es-tablish an incident command post that was manned by Stephen Bogart, Assistant Fire Chief for the Watervliet Arsenal. From that command post, Bogart had to quick-

Photo by John B. Snyder


Training cont.

ly assess the large volume of information flowing in from inside the arsenal fence line, as well as from out-side the fence line.

Once Bogart developed a firm situational awareness of the threat and of the capability flowing into the ar-senal, he was able to assign the right mix of capability to the immediate requirement. To assist Bogart was John J. Walsh, the Albany County Emergency Man-agement Liaison.

“It would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to handle today’s response unless I had a qualified liaison to work with me due to the large amounts of information and coordination that was required for the exercise,” Bogart said.

Once the last hose was rolled up and the training site cleared, Whipple reflected on the morning’s exercise.

“This was a great exercise that brought together more than 75 experienced first responders who came with millions of dollars of equipment to train as one team,” Whipple said. “What the casual observer of-ten misses in these types of exercises is the difficulty of providing command and control, as well as the in-tegration and synchronization of various capabilities in a real-time scenario.”

During the after action review, Whipple thanked the local and state emergency first responders, to include those who stood back and took notes. There were al-most as many observers and controllers as there were exercise participants. The robust oversight of the ex-ercise ensured that every lesson learned, positive or negative, could be captured and then learned from.

“We know that after this morning’s exercise that we are better prepared to respond to a crisis than we were yesterday,” Whipple said. “The community should know that the amount of capability brought to the arsenal today in regards to command and control, equipment, and personnel, is what they should ex-pect to arrive on their street if ever needed.”

This exercise was directed by the Arsenal’s higher headquarters, TACOM Life Cycle Management Command.

Photos by John B. Snyder & Billy Martin

Photos from top to the bot-tom. A decon team from the community prepares to seal a leak on a sulfuric acid pipe. Arsenal Fire Chief John Whipple, stand-ing on the back of a pickup truck, provides an over-view of the training exer-cise to participants prior to the start of the exercise. Arsenal firefighters set-ting up a decon site. This training had great publicity in that it was covered by all major local media as seen here when Schenect-ady Fire Coordinator John Nuzback , right, was being interviewed.

not have a standard communication program and that is where the MTConnect protocol comes in.

“Imagine if we could communicate in real time with every machine, using a common standard, how much clearer a manufacturing center’s common operational picture would be,” Snyder said. “Then if we could take that same application and applied it to other manufacturing requirements such as the amount of energy being consumed by machines and by buildings, manufacturing efficiency would dramatically

improve.”

DOD has two main goals for the challenge, Snyder said.

“The first goal is to motivate domestic software and system experts who would develop the applications, using the MTConnect standard, that have the potential to make defense manufacturers more efficient and competitive,” Snyder said. “The second goal is to then take those award winning concepts and to create the tools that could be adopted by DOD, to include the Watervliet Arsenal.”

Phase one (Ideation Phase), which began on April 12, 2013 and closes on May 31, 2013, will award each of the five winners $5,000 each. This phase is essentially a concept development phase where great, innovative

ideas are measured by their utility and attainability.

In the second phase (Challenge Phase), which begins on July 1, 2013 and closes on Jan. 17, 2014, Phase


By John B. Snyder

Benét leads DOD challenge to harness private sector innovation for defense manufacturing

Photo by John B. Snyder

The Army’s Benét Laboratories announced this month that it is the program manager for a $250,000 Department of Defense challenge that began earlier this month to harness private sector advance manufacturing and intelligence innovation in hopes to make defense manufacturing, such as at the Watervliet Arsenal, more efficient and competitive.

John P. Snyder, Ph.D., who is a senior mechanical engineer with the Army’s Benét Laboratories at the Watervliet Arsenal and who is also the program manager for the DOD challenge, said that DOD entered the first phase of what is called the MTConnect Challenge on April 12.

“The challenge is essentially a tool for DOD to reach outside of the defense research and development fence line to domestic academia and industry, via MTConnect protocol, to stimulate thought and development of tools and applications that will enhance defense manufacturing capabilities,” Snyder said.

DOD-operated manufacturing centers have hundreds, if not thousands, of machines that for the most part operate independently, Snyder said. Each machine has a value to the manufacturing process but its current status, such as where it is in the work flow or its maintenance status, is often captured by stubby-pencil calculations that are not in real time.

The bottom line is that defense manufacturing does

The potential for harvesting innovation from the private sector may someday allow arsenal’s machinery, such as seen here, to provide a real-time common operational picture. Arsenal machinist Tom Ostrander, left, is receiv-ing training on the new Mori Seiki machine from Harvey Downs, Boldt Machinery Inc., in March 2013.

Story continues on page 6, See Benét


one winners take their concepts and develop them into concrete software applications. The grand prize of $100,000 will be awarded to the Challenge winner in April 2014. Second place award recipient will re-ceive $75,000 and the third place finisher will receive $50,000.

The Defense-wide Manufacturing Science and Tech-nology center is DOD’s sponsoring organization, and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing Tech-nology and the Association for Manufacturing Tech-nology are partners with Benét Labs to administer the

Albany Devils honors the Arsenal

Photos by John B. Snyder

The Albany Devils Hockey organiza-tion honored the Arsenal’s 200 years of continuous service during their Military Appreciation Game on April 13, 2013. The Devils read the history about the arsenal while showing 20 arsenal photos to more than 4,000 who were in atten-dance. Arsenal Commander Col. Mark F. Migaleddi and Albany County Execu-tive Dan McCoy dropped the ceremo-nial pucks to start the game.

challenge.

MTConnect® is a newly developed, open communica-tion standard that provides the capability to pass data from equipment and devices to higher level systems for further processing using the XML-based standard. The MTConnect Challenge focuses on promoting the development of manufacturing platform solutions us-ing a standard protocol.

The Association for Manufacturing Technology ad-opted the MTConnect® standard to standardize com-munication protocols that manufacturing equipment can follow to share data.

Benét cont.

line items or product lines shipped every month from Watervliet. Beyond the paint that Migaleddi and others applied to visually improve the box shop, there were also substantial alignment of activities that will greatly improve the workflow … specifically, the arsenal’s mortar manufac-turing line. “In addition to making the work area more atheistically pleasing, we also made significant improvements to our mortar work flow by relocating manpower and equipment from another building into the box shop,” said Steve Koza,

the supervisor of the arsenal’s Man-ufacturing Support Division. “We can now machine mortar products, such as the barrels for the 60mm, 81mm, and the 120mm mortar systems, and then transport those products to our box shop in a mat-ter of minutes,” Koza said. At a time when the arsenal is manufacturing up to 100 60mm mortar systems a month for Afghan-

istan, anything the arsenal can do to streamline the process helps to ensure that tight delivery schedules are met, Koza explained. Other benefits of the 6S project are that Koza now has better oversight of his operations because his workforce will now work in one area versus separate buildings. Ad-ditionally, such things as making the work area more ergo-nomically friendly will improve workers’ safety as well as morale. How well did the commander do in regards to painting? When asked that question, Koza simply smiled, winked and said the commander did fine.

Everyone knew that when Sequestration hit on March 1 that there would be significant cuts within the Department of Defense. And so, when arsenal Commander Col. Mark F. Migaleddi was spotted this month holding a paint roller in the box shop some thought the budget cuts had gone too far. It turned out that Migaleddi wasn’t painting due to fur-loughs or layoffs. He was in the box shop to lend his hand, as well as his position to a program called Lean. The arsenal’s Lean program continuously assesses what operations are re-quired to support the customer, which in more than 90 per-cent of the orders is DOD. Once select activities are as-sessed, they are then measured to see how effective the arse-nal is in conduct-ing those activities. Once the assessment is done, the arsenal then eliminates those activities, processes, or functions that do not add value to the customer. For the arsenal, the tendency might have been to just look at the machining side of the house. But Migaleddi saw that there might be value added by drilling down into non-machining tasks, such as administrative offices and the box shop to improve quality and to reduce lead time by eliminating waste. Within Lean, there is a program called 6S. The arsenal is actively using 6S to not only improve housekeeping practices, but also to improve processes of off-production line activities. In essence, 6S goes beyond the simple beautification of an office or work area to actually improv-ing work flow and communication. The arsenal’s box shop handles more than 700


Commander found trying to paint his way out of a box ... shop

By John B. Snyder

Photo by John B. SnyderCol. Mark F. Migaleddi, left, may have known it was lonely “at the top,” but it appears in this photo that it is just as lonely in the “trenches.” While Migaleddi worked on the wall by him-self, Kevin Chase, box operation handler, and Steve Koza, supervisor for the Manufacturing Support Division, team up to paint the box shop as part of a Lean 6S project.

By Jim Michaels, USA Today (Provide by the Early Bird, April 29, 2013)

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is accelerating the deployment of mortars and artillery to Afghanistan's fledgling army in an effort to compensate for the impending loss of U.S. air power, which has proved devastating against the Taliban over the years.

The loss of American fire-power after 2014 will be a key challenge for the Afghan force and highlights stark choices the White House is confronting as it shapes a follow-on force.

Afghan com-manders are worried about its impact on opera-tions.

"They certainly haven't missed the fact that the finest air force on the planet is go-ing home," said retired Marine general John Al-len, former top coalition commander.

The Pentagon has said it will leave advisers and counterterrorism forces in Afghanistan after the com-bat mission ends. Air power will be available for the U.S. counterterrorism forces.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been critical of air attacks, accusing the coalition of mistakenly killing civilians. The White House has also been pushing to limit the size of the post-2014 force in Afghanistan, which restricts the amount of support the U.S. can supply, military analysts say.


Afghans To Miss U.S. Air Power

Afghanistan's air force is not expected to be fully operational until at least 2016, the Pentagon said. Even then, it won't have near the capabilities of the U.S. military. The Afghans' main close air support plane, a turboprop Super Tucano, won't be fielded until mid-2014, Air Force Maj. Gen. H.D. Polumbo, the

top coalition air commander, said recently.

Allen said the coalition is taking steps that will give Afghani-stan's military a firepower advan-tage over the Taliban, includ-ing providing ad-ditional mortars and arming their Mi-17 helicopters with rockets and gatling guns. The additional firepower, which will be integrated into small units, will let Afghan troops respond quickly and coordinate with troops on the

ground, he said.

"Air power has provided a critical asymmetric advan-tage" in the U.S. and coalition campaign since 2001, Polumbo said.

Militants are unable to mass forces without risking a devastating attack, forcing them to fight in small groups and resort to roadside bombs and strikes on civilian targets.

The loss of air power will take a key advantage away from Afghan forces, said Fred Kagan, a military ana-lyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

This is what an Arsenal shipment looks like once it leaves Watervliet. Here are the Arsenal’s 60mm mortars on a C-17 aircraft being downloaded in Afghanistan. Watervliet Arsenal an-nounced in February 2013 that it received a $5.9 million contract to provide the Afghan Nation-al Army with nearly 900 60mm-mortar systems, as part of the U.S. State Department's Foreign Military Sales program. The Arsenal made its first shipment of the 60mm mortar systems in February 2013 and has been shipping about 100 systems a month to Afghanistan.

Photo provided by the U.S. Air Force


CPAC - Civilian Personnel Advisory Center

Want to view your Official Personnel Folder? We’ve gone paperless!

Employees often call or come to the CPAC office asking to view their OPF (Official Personnel Folder) or 201 File, as it used to be called. Previously, CPAC would have to request it from the file storage room in Maryland, wait a few weeks and then set up an appointment with the employee once it arrived for viewing. Employees would then have to sit down with a CPAC representative, present and flip through their OPF page by page, tab-bing off any forms that they wanted copies of. The OPF would then be returned to Maryland for storage.

Not anymore. All employees now have online access to their eOPF or electronic Official Personnel Folder! The electronic version is exactly the same as your paper OPF, but each document was scanned into the system and made available to you through the eOPF system. This allows for more privacy in viewing your personnel file, more thorough viewing, and the ability to check it as often as you’d like. You can view, print or save any or all of your documents at any time.

Documents can be sorted by effective date, type of document or folder side when scrolling through simply by clicking the column heading. You can also search for a particular document by date or title.

In addition, you will also be notified by email whenever a document is added to your eOPF. This means real-time access to your beneficiary forms, Notification of Personnel Actions (SF-50s), benefits elections, etc. This system saves on postage, paper and time and is a huge benefit to both CPAC representatives and to you, as an employee.

Appropriated Fund (AF) and Nonappropriated Fund (NAF) employees can gain access to eOPF by following their respective login links.

The login URL for AF employees is: https://eopf1.nbc.gov/army/

The login URL for NAF employees is: https://eopf1.nbc.gov/armynaf/

Begin by clicking on “Request Your eOPF ID” and enter your personal information. You will then receive an email containing your eOPF ID. Once you have that information, click on “Request your eOPF Password”. You will need to enter more information, including your eOPF ID, to obtain your password. If you’d like additional assistance, you can review the Basic User Videos at: http://cpol.army.mil/library/general/eOPF.

To protect the integrity of employee personnel records and security of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), access to your eOPF records can ONLY be gained by using a Government computer.

If further assistance is needed logging into eOPF or if you have any questions, you can contact CPAC at (518) 266-5400, 266-4058 or 266-4053 or by email: [email protected].

of launching a projectile up to 20 miles. In May 1950, the Watervliet Arsenal was assigned the task of design-ing and creating a 280mm gun while Watertown Arsenal, Mass., was responsible for the carriage design. In 1951, the first two complete 280mm atomic cannon systems, costing $800,000 each, were ready for months of a series of extensive test firing using conventional warheads at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. Crane was interviewed by the Troy Times Record news-paper after he returned from witnessing the atomic test of the 280mm cannon. His comments and observations were printed in the May 27, 1953 issue of the newspaper. “The test firing of the atomic shell from a cannon de-

signed and built at the Watervliet Arsenal was successful in every aspect,” said Crane after return-ing from the Las Vegas testing grounds where he witnessed the blast destined to revolutionize the tactics of ground warfare. “With a prearranged schedule determined to split-second accuracy, the gun, designed and manufactured by technicians at the Watervliet Arse-

nal, placed the projectile with a remarkable de-gree of precision. It was the most awesome thing I have ever seen. My first sensation was one of tremendous relief. We had confidence in our calculations and all our years of study and design but only the fir-ing could prove we were right.” Crane was aware of the awesome power and potential of the atomic

cannon. “Think how much earlier World War II would have ended and how many lives saved if the weapon had been available at the Battle of the Bulge when tactical aircraft was grounded for several days by weather conditions. We have created this great weapon and now we have to use it intelligently.” Crane commanded the arsenal from September 1952 to August 1954, after spending years involved in the design and manufacture of atomic artillery.


Arsenal led the Army into the nuclear age

Photos provided by the Arsenal Museum

Sixty years ago in the spring of 1953, Watervliet Arsenal played a major role in the advancement of the United States nuclear weapons program and, in effect, sped up the end of the Korean War. At 8:31 a.m. (PST) on May 25, 1953 more than 3,000 enlisted men, officers, and VIPs gathered at Frenchmen’s Flats Nevada Proving Grounds to witness history. On that day, a 280mm M65 Atomic Cannon, with the breech and tube assembly manufactured in Watervliet, test-fired its nuclear payload. The 44-foot long gun sent a 800-pound, nuclear-armed round seven miles downrange with 15 kilotons of explosive force. For comparison, the Hiro-shima and Nagasaki atomic bombs were 20 kilotons each (or 20,000 tons of TNT). The projectile exploded 525 feet above the desire target zone, instantly destroying a series of railroad cars, a steel trestle, and other simulated mili-tary targets. It took 19.2 seconds for the projectile to reach its target zone. This test firing, one of several nuclear tests that occurred in the early months of 1953, code named “Shot Grable,” proved to the world the United States could successfully launch a nuclear payload from an artillery weapon. The successful test meant that the U.S. would be deploying such weapons in Europe and Korea and therefore, putting teeth into President Eisen-hower’s verbal and written pledge to ending the Korean War. Within months, the stalled peace talks began again, with an armistice signed on July 27, 1953. The successful test was witnessed by two representa-tives from Watervliet Arsenal: Ralph Avakian, Ordnance Department engineer and Col. Richard Z. Crane, Watervliet Arsenal Commander. The idea for a massive ground based cannon began in 1944 during World War II. U.S. military leaders, impressed with German long-range cannons, envi-sioned having their own long-range, mobile cannon capable

By Mark Koziol

Top: The first nuclear-capable gun being manufactured at the Watervliet Arsenal in the early 1950s.Bottom: The “Atomic Annie” firing its first round in 1953.


Last month you learned acronyms, this month quotes

By Mark Ripley

Lean Manufacturing:

Lean is about change and has a bias toward action. In other words, go ahead and make the change as best you can but pay attention and fix whatever comes up. But changing can be scary. Okay, you are seasoned federal employees and you don’t scare easily and so, let’s say that change makes many of us feel uncomfortable.

Why? Because we work so hard to adapt to our current environment. Without failure, once we settle into our comfort zone someone is around the corner yelling that we must “change.” Now, don’t go feeling sorry for yourself because adapting to change is not unique to today’s workforce. Take a look at what others have thought about the notion of “change.”

“Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.” James Belasco and Ralph Stayer

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”Charles Darwin? Note... According to internet sources, this quote is commonly misattributed to Darwin and is widely claimed by several authors who interpreted Darwin’s theories.

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”Winston Churchill

“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”John Wooden

“Change before you have to.”Jack Welch

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohn

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”Lao Tzu

“The best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing.”Theodore Roosevelt

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”Tony Robbins

“In a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”Warren Buffett


Take Your Childto Work Day

April 2013

Photos by John B. Snyder

watervliet arsenal newsletter : salvo 30 april 2013

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