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SPAWAR Provides Unique Perspective for USAFRICOM Women’s Military-to-Military Engagement Program

Navy Rear Adm. Christian Becker, commander, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (center), welcomes a delegation of African women military communications specialists June 19 aboard SPAWAR Headquarters as part of U.S. Africa Command’s Women’s Military-to-Military Engagement Program. U.S. Navy photo by Steven A. Davis (Released) 180619-N-PJ405-002

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Photo by: Steve Davis 

Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) hosted a delegation of African women military communications specialists June 19 as part of U.S. Africa Command’s (USAFRICOM) Women’s Military-to-Military Engagement Program.

The African nation officers and enlisted participants are in San Diego to attend the 31st annual Joint Women’s Leadership Symposium, June 21-22. Their attendance was coordinated by USAFRICOM’s command, control, communications and computer systems directorate. This year’s engagement included 14 women military representatives from Angola, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

"USAFRICOM is committed to building partner capacity on the continent of Africa. It is a strategic main effort of our campaign plan,” said Army. Brig. Gen. Christopher L. Eubank, USAFRICOM director of communication (J6). “USAFRICOM will work by, with and through our partners to create conditions that allow our partners to build capabilities to address the drivers of instability.”

As the Navy’s information warfare systems command, SPAWAR played a valuable role in the participants’ military professional development experience in San Diego.

One of SPAWAR’s fundamental efforts is to implement the information warfare platform across the Navy, which integrates individual command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) capabilities within the fleet. This strengthens combat capabilities by aggregating, fusing and exposing data and services across mission areas to provide actionable knowledge to the Navy and Marine Corps, as well as U.S. coalition partners.

“Our goal was to share with our African nation partners how the Navy trains communicators and delivers essential capability to warfighters,” said SPAWAR Commander Rear Admiral Christian Becker. “We provided the attendees a U.S. Navy perspective on the significance of information warfare, with a broad view on the communications profession. It was an honor for SPAWAR to host these extraordinary military leaders from across the African continent."

A key element of the command’s engagement with coalition partners is fulfilled by the International C4I Integration Program Office, PMW 740. The program office played the central role in explaining how the United States provides C4I to allies and coalition partners via the Foreign Military Sales process.

“We modernize our international partners’ computer and electronic systems and integrate them across ships, submarines, aircraft and shore stations,” explained Sean Moone, PMW 740’s program manager. “By maximizing the United States' ability to communicate and share information with friendly nations, our allies are able to better defend themselves, protect their waterways, and respond to humanitarian assistance or disaster relief efforts.”

The goal of the AFRICOM Women’s Military-to-Military Engagement Program is to build partner capacity by familiarizing and exposing African women military signal personnel with Department of Defense signal and cyber defense key processes and training procedures.

SPAWAR identifies, develops, delivers and sustains information warfighting capabilities supporting naval, joint, coalition and other national missions. SPAWAR consists of more than 10,000 active duty military and civil service professionals located around the world and close to the fleet to keep SPAWAR at the forefront of research, engineering and acquisition to provide and sustain information warfare capabilities to the fleet.