PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. -- Picatinny Arsenal marked its designation as the Department of Defense's Joint Center of Excellence for Guns and Ammunition with a special ceremony Nov. 18.
The ceremony brings to a close six years of effort that began in September 2005 when the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission called for creating an integrated weapons and armaments specialty site for guns and ammunition at Picatinny.
The joint center at Picatinny is focused on streamlining the acquisition process to deliver quality-engineered guns and ammunition solutions when and where they are needed, on time and at the right price.
During the ceremony, officials unveiled a bronze plaque commemorating the installation's new designation.
"This has been a great year with a lot of great accomplishments for Picatinny," said Brig. Gen. Jonathan Maddux, Picatinny Senior Commander and Program Executive Officer for Ammunition.
From energy conservation awards to ARDEC receiving DoD's first-ever Shingo Award to Picatinny's M855A1 5.56mm Enhanced Performance Round team being honored with a David Packard Excellence in Acquisition Award, Maddux said today's event was another highlight in an accomplishment-filled year.
As part of the BRAC requirement that began in 2005, the Navy and the Army each had six new construction or major facility renovations on Picatinny.
"We're very glad to welcome our 270-plus Navy (personnel) to this post to join our workforce here. We've done joint things for a long time, but this gives us an opportunity to use synergy under this air of great austerity that we have in DoD."
"It's nice to see when the services come together," said John Fischer, Director, Defense Laboratory Enterprise Office, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.
"What you're doing to do, what you're going produce. What you're going to jointly develop and jointly field and support will be truly unique and special. I believe what you're doing here will be a template for the way we operate in a technical environment in the future. Once again, Picatinny and the Navy, you're blazing a trail," Fischer said.
"Specific to the R&D community, once you get this place up and running and the activities going, what you're going to have is the bulk of the activities in the domain in which we work being executed out of here for two services -- for the Army and for the Navy," explained Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center Director Dr. Gerardo Melendez.
"What that means for us is that we have more talent, more facilities, different missions - all of those which we can leverage more so than we could before. Plus you have the other bonus that you have everyone together, and that co-location really helps."
While different services have different missions, Melendez says that there are many similarities between the weapons systems that different services use.
"Even though we have different missions -- we deal predominately with land components and they deal predominately with sea -- there are a lot of underlying areas that are applicable to both of us and are common. What we're looking for is to really establish R&D (research and development) programs that we can do together and then once we develop the new technology look at the application for our respective services."
"Efficiencies are going to be one of the drivers for us given the forecast over the next few years. So being able to leverage with each other and bring efficiencies along the way is going to become more and more important," Melendez said.
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