Customized software platform to streamline complex training coordination for AFSOC aviation squadrons

Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) has nearly 50 aviation squadrons. As with every other military unit, they are constantly training when not deployed. The volume of required training required to achieve and maintain operational readiness is substantial. For these reasons, any training evolution that is missed or whose scope is degraded is expensive both financially and in terms of squandered time. These training evolutions are also complex to coordinate, but squadrons frequently have poor software tooling available to manage that complexity. SOFware LLC proposes to solve this coordination problem with an extension of our cloud-based Skedify application. Skedify was sold to AFSOC in 2014 in order to streamline the training coordination challenges for AFSOC’s ground force squadrons (the Special Tactics--or, “ST”--community). Prior to Skedify, the ST squadrons solved this challenge with home-grown tracking systems based on Microsoft Outlook and Excel, and with an enormous investment of labor hours. Skedify was a tremendous success, expanding from the initial customer, STTS, to become the enterprise solution for the entire ST community and the later for the entire Guardian Angel (GA) community. STTS conducted an analysis that showed the amount of man hours invested in training evolution coordination shrank from 3,648 hours annually to just 200 hours. Additionally, since Skedify is cloud based, operators could access the application from anywhere they had internet access, unlike before Skedify, when they had to be at government computers connected to the NIPRnet. The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for AFSOC, Mr. Todd Wieser, was intimately involved with the Skedify project and saw first hand its dramatic impact on the ST and GA squadrons. He approached SOFware with the idea of modifying it to also support AFSOC’s aviation squadrons. We are confident we can deliver similar results to AFSOC aviation squadrons to streamline their complex training coordination challenges.