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Southwest Asia’s superheroes of
software 554 ELSW ‘combat coders’ make AOR travel faster, safer By
Staff Sgt. Kelly White "The Air Force Force combat coders are all doing high-visibility jobs that have theater-wide impact," said Capt. Rodney Bagley, AFFOR Theater Maintenance and Software Development chief, deployed from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas. "Thanks to their efforts, people across all services are getting where they need to be within the AOR, faster and safer; and close air support is being provided to U.S. and Coalition ground forces more effectively than ever before." Two of these combat coders, Staff Sgt. Jonathan Kirby and Senior Airman Josh Miller, both software engineers deployed from the 754th Electronic Systems Group, Maxwell-Gunter AFB, Ala., are dedicated to ensuring travel within the AOR takes people out of the fight for shorter periods of time and keeps them out of harm's way as much as possible in the process. The Prototype Passenger Reservation Process is an initiative started in mid-November, Airman Miller said. "We're now getting close to the completion of a basic system that will move people throughout the AOR significantly better. The days of people having to travel on dangerous roads to a passenger terminal and spend a lot of time there, waiting to see if they did or didn't make a flight, will become a thing of the past. People will request a flight online and find out via e-mail whether or not they made it." The engineers are modeling their system after one that's been used successfully in the Iraq theater, said Captain Bagley. "The system used in Iraq is outstanding for point-to-point reservation travel, and ours will have further enhancements to accommodate round trips," he said. There are also issues moving passengers between Iraq and Afghanistan - which AOR commander takes control at given points in time and differences these commanders have in passenger movement priorities. But, as the commanders work these issues out and provide the coders with that data, they'll be able to incorporate the correct algorithms into their system, the captain said. Although they found a system to fashion their own after, their job hasn't been easy to accomplish. "This project has been a bottom-up approach as far as development, in that usually, my team gets a project package with a full set of requirements up front...but not this time," Captain Bagley said. Leadership simply said it wanted something like this that works, the Captain added. "From there, I went all around talking to various people, from passenger terminal to Air Mobility Division folks, to figure out how they do their jobs and how I can make a reservation system to make what they have to do easier," Airman Miller explained. "Everyone must be happy with what we've done, especially the commanders prioritizing and approving the travel requests, before we put the system into a live situation. So, it wasn't until after talking to all of these people and putting a set of requirements together of what I understood they'd need, that I was able to sit down with the code and start writing the prototype." And "sitting down with the code," meant sitting down and typing more than 10,000 lines of perfectly inputted code, the captain explained. "It's been a lot of long days for them, but it's also been great to see their faces light up when they've figured something out that's been giving them trouble," Captain Bagley said, "and their work will soon be presented to high-level NATO movement personnel, to explain the initiatives being worked here to see how they might dovetail into things being worked elsewhere." Another initiative the captain's team has worked on to improve troop war-fighting capability is already up and running - the Air Tasking Order Database. "The requirements for this project came from the strategic air division, senior operations duty officer and Navy liaison officer on the Combined Air Operations Center floor," said Captain Bagley. "One of the coders on this project, Airman 1st Class Justin Daniell, and I also went to Afghanistan to talk with the Air Support Operations Group that interfaces with the CAOC to ensure he had all the criteria he needed to do the job right, from the tactical level all the way up to the strategic level." The ATO system took location-specific desktop tracking systems, maintained at various places throughout the AOR, and consolidated them into a Web-based tracking program giving strategic leaders an all-in-one picture of all the activity, and available resources in the AOR, said Airman Daniell, who is deployed from the 554 ELSG. The ATO log-side of the project concentrates on flights as a whole, said Sergeant Kirby. A subsidiary system to the ATO log, the Chief of Combat Operations log, coded by Senior Airman Armani Wilson, adds in the actual kinetic factor, such as weapons fired and weapons equipped. Together, the ATO and CCO logs allow commanders to track things like execution of aircraft mission information in direct support of ground forces, changes in planned missions, weather issues and post-mission analysis, by automatically generating reports streamlined to the strategy division. The processes, done the old way, took roughly four or five hours a day to get in order, but with automation, it is knocked down to less than an hour, said Airman Daniell. "The whole idea is that, instead of all these little, individual databases, all of them would reside on one huge database with different interfaces that can be accessed through a Web link," said the captain. "What's created is a picture of what aircraft are flying what missions and when. So, when a Joint Tactical Air Controller on the ground calls for air support, leaders can quickly see which aircraft is nearest the troop location, and they can direct that aircraft to the controller much more quickly." Within seconds from the time a JTAC calls in, leaders can see which air asset can get there fastest, Airman Daniell added. "Getting this system up and running has required Airman Daniell to pull some crazy hours to support the CAOC, and he's done an absolutely stellar job helping warfighters make quicker decisions because they have more accurate information at their fingertips." Captain Bagley attributes his team's ability to succeed and thrive on effective communication, up and down the chain, and the professionalism of his troops. "We've got a real strong dialog with all the key players involved in producing and using our software, and I have a strong team of coders. I couldn't be more pleased with them," he said. Senior Airman Armani Wilson of the 754 ELSG is also part of the overseas coding contingent. (Archives) |