U.S. Army

Federal, DOD, Army, state and local authorities have issued various directives limiting access to government installations and industry facilities. These proactive measures are necessary to protect and preserve the force and the civilian population and they move much of the materiel enterprise into a telework posture. Nevertheless, the Army is leveraging collaborative sites and other technologies as it strives to maintain the momentum of its crucial weapon system developments to provide a qualitative edge to both current and future warfighters. Continuing force modernization efforts also engage a highly skilled workforce and support the economic vibrancy underlying American democracy.

The Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space (PEO M&S) and the Cruise Missile Defense Systems (CMDS) project office anticipated the crisis and provided their workforce the tools, training and authorities to continue the mission uninterrupted.

Beginning in early March 2020, CMDS updated property passes enabling all personnel to use government-issued laptops offsite, conducted virtual private network (VPN) system checks, trained its entire workforce on telework procedures and coordinated with the Army’s Contracting Command to ensure a seamless transition from onsite to offsite contractor support. Leaders also proactively identified the individuals most susceptible to coronavirus and took steps to minimize their risk of exposure as a top priority. As of early April 2020, more than 90 percent of the PEO M&S and CMDS workforce continues business as usual from offsite locations. The entire organization displayed great resilience transitioning to this posture in less than a week from what was an almost exclusively onsite workforce.

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