Air Force Brig. Gen. Kathryn Johnson and civilian senior executive Robert Shofner were brought in to salvage the Air Force's logistics modernization efforts following the cancellation of the long-troubled Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS) enterprise resource planning (ERP) in late 2012. The service pulled the plug on the program after spending $1 billion for what one senior Air Force official termed "negligible capability." The Air Force finally lost confidence in the program--and terminated the prime contractor, Virginia-based Computer Sciences Corp. -- when it realized it would need to spend another $1.1 billion just to get one-quarter of the program's planned capability. Now the Air Force is planning to transition from an all-encompassing ERP solution to a hybrid approach involving legacy system remediation, modernization and transformation. Johnson, director of systems integration, and Shofner, program executive officer for business and enterprise systems, recently discussed the status of the program with C4ISR & Networks Contributor Sean Reilly. Following are edited excerpts.
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