Problem To Solve:
Tanker Planning
The methodologies to service airborne refuelling requirements were personnel and time-intensive. JIGSAW is an existing software tool to handle this task. JIGSAW was designed by the United States Department of Defence to complete this task in the Air Operations Centres environment
Details
Client: NATO AIRCOM
Status: Completed
User Group: NATO Entities
Product Highlights:
Only two weeks after the initial discussion with Allied Air Command, Allied Command Transformation Innovators demonstrated JIGSAW during NATO Exercise TRIDENT JUPITER 19-1 in Fall 2019. The capability proved to be a tremendous improvement over existing methodologies and was subsequently tested by NATO personnel during the NATO Specialized Heavy Air Refuelling Course in February 2020.
During the Specialized Heavy Air Refuelling Course, a team of four students took three hours (a total of 12 person-hours) to plan a series of 108 air refuelling requests, in a notional 24-hour mission day, as part of their course culmination activity. In contrast, using JIGSAW, a single test subject planned the same series of missions in only 1.5 hours with no knowledge of air-to-air refuelling planning and only 30 minutes of JIGSAW familiarisation training. In addition, JIGSAW planned the refuelling requests with only 25 tanker sorties versus the 28 used by the students. This test proved the efficiency of JIGSAW in reducing planning time and resources, as well as increasing operational flexibility during the mission execution phase.