Team 2 Week 9 Blog

 

This week our beneficiary discovered involved showing our prototype walkthrough video to our beneficiaries in 3rd group as well as other military personnel outside of 3rd group in the Army and Air Force.

 

Key takeaways

• Our program will save teams steps and time on researching historical data and developing the cost estimate worksheet
• The long range training calendar function is not particularly useful, but may need to be a part of any product
• Outside professions such as law that do not require very specific trainings will not find our program particularly useful

 

1. Major Paul – 82nd Regiment Operations Officer

• Normal on/off-site training is easy for the 82nd because they repeat training a lot. Hard part is managing ammunition for ranges
• Current process includes: Modifying numbers through analysis(Need to factor in # of targets, # number of people, hours of daylight, account for less ammo used with blanks due to jamming) – takes a long time to calculate(~500 man hours!)

• If these ranges had historical data and we made a calculator that factored in the correct things, this would make it a lot easier. Major Dunn wants to make the S4 position more data driven(forecast farther out and reduce surprises).

 

2. Captain Josh – S4

• Full procurement process is lengthy and may take 2-3 years. Involves requesting bids and then going through rigorous testing
• If under 10k or between 10-25k then they can use their SF issued credit cards to buy possible after the approval of the S6(comms)
• If it is over 25k and we serve a specific purpose and we have a DUNS number then they can potentially acquire the product through PRNC(fill out form and then money is wired to us after delivering product)

 

3. Major Tak (Sep.)- US Air Force IOS Intermediate Cyber Pipeline

• ”Tying into DTS automatically and pulling out real numbers, you can save hours and hours and hours.”
• The ability to tie into training plans and forecast future training needs will save weeks’ worth of time, and helps build a complete picture on the back end, and be very useful.
• In the Air Force, training for mature career fields is pretty cut-and-dried. For new fields like cyber, designing training from scratch was like playing darts in the dark— you don’t know if you hit the mark until later.

 

4. Lieutenant Mike – US Coast Guard Domestic Vessels Inspections Branch

• I get my funding for the year up front, $50 grand for all 12 members of my shop for training, property, and operations. Since I have a small team, I’ll know how much training I need to do depending on who’s coming in, and can budget accordingly. We get 2-3 new guys who cycle in per year. I’ve been in my position for long enough that I also know right away who needs what training within a few minutes of talking to them.
• If I ever have a shortfall, I can literally walk to talk to my superior, or go up to the district, and have a face-to-face conversation. If there isn’t money there, I can negotiate with other divisions. The whole process takes only a few hours.
• To be honest, this seems like a great program, but I don’t think it works for us, because scheduling/budgeting isn’t that hard with a unit as small as mine. If I had a unit of 70 people, I would like to use this.

 

5. Song (Civilian, Lawyer)

• 
  The bar treats CLEs as an honor system– it’s self-reporting with some auditing.
• “CLEs run $800-$1500 per course. Non-profits get CLE courses for free. If I didn’t get classes for free, or if I were a small one-person firm, it would change my calculus, and this tool would be useful.”
• When it comes time to fulfill requirements, it depends if you want to learn or just want to check the boxes. Some people will sign up for online classes and have them playing in the background while they do other work, just so they can complete it.

 

6. Major Ryan – Battalion XO

• Feedback on prototype video was very positive, people are really excited about creating a system that improves the training process by cutting down steps
• They would like to see a more refined search with filters. Filters would help ODAs choose certain locations and certain prices that fit their training and plan
• If our system goes on NIPR, then it will be relatively easy to get the product in the hands of ODA leaders for testing. It just needs to pass legal and IT and they should be fine
• There are workarounds to the full procurement process but it depends on the cost of the software and level of network access required

 

7. Chief Matlock

• Order of operations for populating training calendar: 1. Enter cycle start date and Deployment date. 2. Input dictated events – training holidays, dictated training events (big/group events). 3. Individual schools. 4. Collective METL events.
• 350-1 Manual lays out individual courses and recommended training for each role on the team.

 

8. Scott Frederick

• Starting from zero, getting to actual purchase will take 2-3 years.
• Standard route is to have sponsor put forth an initiative proposal outlining the reason for the investment in new technology.  That then advances to POM Submission (Program Objective Memorandum) which seeks investment money for the program in the next year’s budget.  It is then submitted to the Pentagon for consideration into the overall budget. Assuming it is included and funds allocated, it then goes to the Regional Contracting Officer who works with internal stakeholders to draw up the contract which includes deployment conditions.
• A non-standard route would be for already allocated funds to be diverted to fund your product.  This is most likely in the case of “must have” technology that provides a war fighting capability that is immediately in demand.

 

9. Capt. Barney

• Signals Commander part of HQ Support Group
• Biggest pain point is that PFCs come to his group straight from Advanced Individual Training and in all likelihood have zero exposure to the systems used in Special Forces. Ideally,  he would like to see the AIT curriculum expanded. (Note that Signals members do not go through standard Special Forces induction path.)
• The Signals group does not follow a deployment and training cycle like the ODAs.  Signals team members are tasked out to ODAs and become part of the ODA when the ODA requests support.
• There is not an existing tool or system for tracking the capabilities and training of the members of the Signals team.

 

10. Maj. Tadd (Army Rangers)

• I think that this system will be more effective for Special Forces/Special Operations type units because they manage training at a much lower level.  In the conventional Army, all of this is managed at the Battalion or Higher Level.
• Forecasting ammo is where the BulletTrain could be the most helpful. Units are terrible about recording how much ammo they used on any given range/event.
• Incorporating AAR into BulletTrain could actually take more time, since the AAR process isn’t going away, and it’s now another system you have to log into and upload something.

11. Cpt. Chris

• Longest part of training plan is finding hotels and rental cars, it gets expensive when you have a full team doing a week of training
• CEW worksheet editor would save a lot of time
• Ammo forecasting is necessary. It isn’t the most difficult part of the process right now but it could be almost fully populated by past data.