1423 Powhatan St., Suite 1
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
Phone (703) 836-6727
Fax (703) 836-7491
Email: asnehq@navalengineers.org

 

ASNE is the leading professional engineering society for engineers, scientists and allied professionals who conceive, design, develop, test, construct, outfit, operate and maintain complex naval and maritime ships, submarines and aircraft and their associated systems and subsystems.  ASNE also serves the educators who train the professionals, researchers who develop related technology, and students who are preparing for the profession.  Society activities provide support for the U.S. Navy; U.S. Coast Guard; U.S. Marine Corps; U.S. Merchant Marine and U.S. Army.

ASNE is the seventh oldest technical society in the United States.  It was founded in 1888 by a group of naval engineering pioneers, most of them officers of the U.S. Navy's Engineering Corps, who sought a unified approach to their profession in order to make the most of new advances in technology. The purposes of ASNE are:           

  • to advance the knowledge and practice of naval engineering in public and private applications and operations,
  • to enhance the professionalism and well-being of members, and
  • to promote naval engineering as a career field.

For 125 years, the Society’s objectives have been strengthened and preserved to meet the changing needs of a time-honored profession. Today ASNE conducts a variety of technical meetings and symposia, publishes the highly regarded Naval Engineers Journal and a number of other technical proceedings and publications, and fosters professional development and technical information exchange through technical committees, local section activities and cooperative efforts with government organizations and other professional societies.

The Society's annual meeting, ASNE Day, is typically held in February of each year in the Washington, DC, area. The meeting features major addresses by high level industry and government leaders and panel discussions by leading members of the profession.  It also includes presentation and discussion of technical papers on a variety of timely naval engineering topics, presentation of the Society's prestigious annual awards and a large exposition with government and industry exhibits covering the full spectrum of naval engineering technology. ASNE Day is highlighted by the Society’s annual Honors Gala, attended by hundreds of executives and senior managers from both government and industry.

Our website is designed to not only serve our members, but also to support scholars, students and others interested in the varied field of naval engineering.  We welcome your suggestions on ways we can improve your experience. 

Michael J. O'Driscoll

Award: Gold Medal Award
Year: 1997
Recipient:
Mr. Michael J. O'Driscoll
Reason:
For his significant contribution to naval engineering as set forth in the following:

As the first acquisition program manager of the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) program, Mr. Michael J. O’Driscoll overcame tremendous challenge to take a revolutionary and unprecedented concept from prototype to Fleet delivery. CEC provides a dramatic new, battle group-wide, distributed system capability that allows air defense systems to share unfiltered sensor measurement data in real time so that each combatant can independently maintain an identical air picture with track accuracy and continuity better than the best contributing sensor. This capability dramatically enhances battle group effectiveness, and has clear potential for application to a joint battle force.

Mr. O’Driscoll was confronted with congressional direction to accelerate delivery of a concept that was proven only in prototype, while also adding major, unproven capabilities to the system. Beginning with a program that had not addressed any acquisition milestones, and an engineering capability that existed only in fragmented form at Navy laboratories and contractors, Mr. O‘Driscoll developed a comprehensive program plan and put together a strong system engineering, development, manufacturing and test team. He negotiated CEC network interfaces with AEGIS, TARTAR, CVN and LHD combat systems, coordinated development and test schedules with affected ship programs and created a fully compatible specification and configuration process. He used innovative, integrated network testing for early checkout of interfaces via sophisticated simulators, and he coordinated tests with networks of ships. This led to the first major developmental test featuring an entire Battle Group as the test article. The tests demonstrated the capability to maintain composite tracks and conduct successful cooperative engagements against the most difficult targets that could be fielded.

While proceeding to on-schedule tactical certification and IOC for the first generation CEC, Mr. O’Driscoll initiated development of a second generation system to reduce life cycle costs. This production version was successfully tested onboard USS Wasp in 1997 to support an upcoming acquisition decision for low rate initial production. Mr. O’Driscoll also led development of concepts for more advanced cooperative engagements and use of CEC by the Joint Services. His program office was selected to manage the joint-services Mountain Top Advance Concept Technical Demonstration (ACTD) which resulted in ships engaging low-altitude drones well beyond their own radar horizon for the first time, using a type of cooperative engagement know as “Forward Pass.” The program resulted in plans to integrate CEC with the Marine Corps Hawk missile batteries and to include CEC in Theater Ballistic Missile Defense.

Mr. O’Driscoll’s vision, leadership, and superb engineering management have resulted in development and fielding of a dramatically new capability that is already a significant Navy force multiplier and which has proven potential for the future joint applications. He is most highly deserving of the ASNE Gold Medal Award.