402nd Software Engineering Group earns 2019 Rear Admiral Grace M. Hopper Award

The 402nd Software Engineering Group at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex has been awarded the 2019 Rear Admiral Grace M. Hopper Award for Software Maintenance Excellence in its inaugural year.

The honor was presented at the Secretary of Defense Maintenance Awards banquet in Spokane, Wash., on Dec. 10. It is one of four annual awards that recognize the most outstanding military maintenance organizations in the Department of Defense.

“This is a huge accomplishment for the 402nd SWEG. It recognizes the essential work done to maintain and enhance the capabilities of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense and our warfighters,” said Bob Herrmann, 402nd SWEG director.

Among the group’s numerous examples of world-class software engineering support provided to the warfighter, SWEG leaders highlighted three exemplary accomplishments during the award year.

• The Remotely Piloted Aircraft Squadron Operations Center dug deep into the hardware and software architecture resulting in $136 million in savings for 16 sites. This was accomplished while achieving 69 continuous months of on-time deliveries.

• The A-10 Upgraded Heads-Up Display team provided software reset capability enabling the A-10 program office to rescue a $60 million program from failure. Hindered by limited time, no knowledge of the software and no Operational Flight Program build or test capability, the UHUD team rose to the challenge and accepted the workload at great risk.

• The software development team delivered a solution for modernizing the F-16’s obsolete Mission Data File Generator software and hardware to a standard PC. The team accomplished the feat by modifying and updating existing software. The effort has saved the government $2 million and 2,000 labor hours.

The Rear Admiral Grace M. Hopper Award for Software Maintenance Excellence is among four award categories under the Secretary of Defense Maintenance Awards Program. The Field Level Awards (Large, medium and small categories); Robert T. Mason Award for Depot Maintenance Excellence; and the Sustainment Training, Advice, and Assistance of Foreign Military Forces Award were presented at the 2019 DOD Maintenance Symposium by the Honorable Ellen Lord, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment.

The software maintenance award was named after Grace Hopper a mathematician and a rear admiral in the US Navy. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark 1 computer and developed the first compiler. Her work at the Conference on Data Systems Languages in 1959 led to the development of the COBOL programming language. She also was the first advocate to replace large centralized computer systems with networks of small distributed computers.

Hopper joined the Navy at the age of 34 and retired in 1985 at the age of 79. In 1986, she received the Defense Distinguished Service medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded by DoD. In 1996, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, the USS Hopper, was commissioned in her name and she was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.