Amid Nationwide COVID-19 crisis, USAFWS completes WSINT with the help of mission planning software developed by BrainGu
PRESS RELEASE: June 9, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic will have lasting effects on the U.S. military and how it operates in the future. Hundreds of airmen completing the U.S. Air Force Weapons School’s (USAFWS) rigorous coursework were left without a way to collaborate in real time while planning the final capstone exercise. The U.S. Air Force Weapons School Integration (WSINT) exercise is a series of complex, large-force employment missions, converging over the Nevada Test and Training Range. WSINT previously necessitated co- location of all participants at Nellis AFB. BrainGu is a cutting-edge software innovation lab that supports operators across the DoD. BrainGu partnered with the USAF in order to produce the Web-based Information Dominant Warfare (WIDOW) Mission Planning Software within only five weeks. WIDOW exceeded mission and operator needs, enabling WSINT participants to plan in a modern and collaborative environment.
COVID forced the Weapons School to execute our first distributed tactical-integration exercise with participants from more than ten geographically separated locations across the CONUS. WIDOW helped synchronize mission planning to ensure safe and effective execution of highly complex air, space, and cyberspace operations designed to solve our toughest potential tactical problems. The threat may force us to operate from distributed locations in the future. WIDOW is helping the Weapons School prepare the force to WIN! - USAFWS Commandant, Col Jack "Winder" Arthaud
WIDOW, built on PlatformOne, is a streamlined mission planning tool. It is purpose-built to give mission planning cell chiefs, mission commanders, and their teams time back to focus on lethality instead of admin. It makes administrative tasks more efficient across disparate teams of mission planners. In order to meet these timelines, BrainGu and the USAF relied on PlatformOne and the automated software tools provided by the DOD Enterprise DevSecOps Initiative. PlatformOne allowed BrainGu to meet the tight deadlines in a secure, flexible, and interoperable manner. During WSINT the BrainGu team completed 246 front end deployments, and 94 backend deployments during live usage (with zero downtime)— all powered by the CI/CD pipeline on PlatformOne.
WIDOW demonstrated at WSINT that a collaborative environment enables warfighters to optimize planning tasks between receipt of the Air Tasking Order and mission execution. These extra hours are invaluable to refine tactics and enhance lethality.
Distributed mission planning is a brutal reality, but WIDOW significantly decreases the amount of time we spent working on admin and formatting excel sheets. This allowed the bulk of our focus to be spent refining the tactical plan. I loved it. I think WIDOW is the future of mission planning. Literally click one button, and it builds the product for you. It couldn’t get any easier or faster. - Capt Alex "Tuna" Plonk, 8th Weapons Squadron
BrainGu is an innovation lab with an overarching mission to dream of, incubate, and scale technology around capabilities that advance the state of the art. As a company, we combine critical analysis, creativity, and technology to transform and scale existing workflows by an order of magnitude.
WIDOW Bridging Operational Gap Between Air Force and Navy
For the first time, Naval Aviation units embarked at sea and Air Force units based on land were able to plan collaboratively and in real time. This was made possible during Northern Edge 21 by the WIDOW mission planning software developed by BrainGu.
WIDOW Enabling Warfighters through Direct Access to Developers
This presentation was delivered at AFITC 2021 and focuses on how a process that focuses on User Experience can lead to developing modern and secure software that helps warfighters achieve their mission objectives.
BrainGu Selected as a Department of Defense PlatformOne Authorized Reseller
BrainGu’s recent and continued growth is in no small part due to our partnership with PlatformOne. Having a partner in PlatformOne that also values the Agile process is invaluable. We’re very proud to continue this mission, bringing the Silicon Valley approach to software development for the U.S. government.