MINTACS' Gold Medal Performance
December 11, 2000
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Designed to coordinate the Navy's sea-mine hunting and clearance diving activities, the system performed smoothly when used by Navy and police divers to secure waterways surrounding Sydney's Olympic venues.
MINTACS is part of the Defence Materiel Organisation's Mine Warfare Command Support System (MWCSS) Project, which also includes two MWCSS secret networks, a training system and five deployable command support systems.
According to Project Director Keith Eastaughffe, MINTACS is the gold medal performer of the project so far.
"MINTACS is a locally-developed product that has been delivered very quickly and cost effectively," he said."
Divers
"It has led to vastly more efficient diving operations Navy clearance divers can now do in 15 minutes what would have taken three or four hours using paper charts".MINTACS brings together a wide variety of data and uses a modular software suite to enable the Mine Warfare Force Commander and operations staff at HMAS Waterhen in Sydney to plan missions, monitor tasking and conduct detailed assessment of mission progress.
The software suite includes a tactical display, a force planning module, a force scheduling module, as well as minehunting, minesweeping and clearance diving planning and assessment tools. For the Olympic Games data used included satellite images, scanned RASTER navigational charts, street maps and side scan sonar images of the sea floor.
According to MINTACS Product Manager, Lieutenant Commander Jon Peacock, a module was also developed for the Games allowing MINTACS to interface with global positioning system units utilised by the clearance diving teams.
As well as being a technical success, MINTACS is a big hit with the divers. "It provides us with real time information to show where all the diving units are and what they are doing 24 hours a day," said Navy clearance diver Sub-Lieutenant Damien Munchenberg. "Now everyone wants it!"
BIG demand
MINTACS is also the result of a very successful Defence and industry partnership and a model of new Defence acquisition methods."A very tight schedule, and the need to develop a system that closely met user requirements, meant that the contractor we worked with had to be willing to try a different approach from the traditional acquisition methods," Mr Eastaughffe said.
Both the project's contract framework and the development process were unusual, but a small Sydney company, Solutions from Silicon (SFS), rose to the challenge.
According to Russell Norman, Technical Director for SFS, a two part contractual framework succeeded as a risk mitigation strategy from both the company's and the project office's perspective.
"The initial nine month contract involved developing a prototype of the SFS solution using an iterative and incremental development process that allowed high levels of user involvement.
This allowed us and the project office to assess and refine both the solution and also the development process."
"Our use of the iterative and incremental process involved developing the MINTACS software, in consultation with the users, from a succession of prototypes.
Off shelf
By using commercially available off-the-shelf technology we were also able to keep costs down," said Mr Norman.For Mr Eastaughffe, the initial contract also demonstrated to the project office that SFS were committed to the new acquisition process. This meant that Defence project staff were then confident that SFS could deliver on the second part of the contract for the final product. This is scheduled to proceed for the next two years, continually enhancing and developing the MINTACS software to meet the user requirements.
"In the end SFS has not only met user specifications within a very short time frame, but they also provided a value-for-money solution - they were also very flexible and responsive in their approach," said Mr Eastaughffe.
"It really is a pleasure to do business with them."
For more information please contact Mr Keith Eastaughffe on 02 62655729 or email keith.Eastaughffe@cbr.defence.gov.au