SBIR/STTR Award attributes
The United States Air Force (USAF) has been accelerating innovation across the service and is in many ways at the forefront of the uniformed services; however, service-wide innovation investment in operational deployment readiness and global mobility is limited. Lack of innovation hinders flexibility and adaptability in ever-changing operational environments with limited capabilities to enable rapid deployment execution. These massive inefficiencies impede progress towards USTRANSCOM’s priority of “Ready now and in the future commitment to maintaining out ‘fight tonight’ readiness.” An opportunity exists to advance the capabilities that provide airlift inspections for the safe and expeditious deployment of forces to accomplish Joint Inspections. Today’s Joint Inspection (JI) process requires manual and antiquated methods. Inspectors use various data to complete inspections, including paperwork generations via legacy systems, reference material from multiple publications, aircraft schematics from Technical Orders, calculators, and other tools to conduct JI. There is a lack of single resourcing for data required within inspections or legacy system integrations that support various essential items to be satisfied within a JI. The prospect of reducing the resource strain in completing JIs by having a digital tool to gather the various requirements to support expedited inspection for multiple materials and equipment would save workforce hours in training and mission accomplishment. Commanders could also have new data to support rapid decision-making for making the difference between victory and defeat. JI-JOE will introduce an intelligent web-based and mobile platform to transform the JI process. JI-JOE will provide inspectors with a multi-step wizard with intuitive navigation. The addition of this type of wizard can reduce the complexity of tasks, facilitate verification/validation of each step, the flow can be manipulated based upon provided answers, and show progress statuses through completion. Additionally, the application will have defined aircraft schematics and restrictions by airframe type that includes cabin dimensions, weight limits, etc., to notify inspectors if an item(s) meets or exceeds aircraft capabilities. JI-JOE will provide additional airlift safety by supporting hazardous material compatibility/segregation safety factors with essential warnings based on the guidance to identify risk or unacceptability to inspectors for appropriate action immediately. Finally, introducing an effective, certified JI capability into Air Mobility Command (AMC)’s Aerial Port of the Future (APoF) architecture, the mobility component for USAF’s strategy to create decision advantage will be possible. The enhancements provided by technology decrease training curves and bolster readiness while ruthlessly attacking manual processes as directed by the Department of the Air Force (DAF) Chief Information Officer (CIO).
